A Review and Laboratory Trials on the Development of Geopolymer Mortar from Ceramic Waste

Concrete as a construction material, has been used and is still the most widely used material in the construction industry due to the easiness, its versatility, and the various advantages it has. But due to the massive use, concrete currently accounts for about eight percent of the carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere, making it a major contributor to the climate crisis. The use of new materials has always been a challenge and a topic of vast inquisitiveness in the construction industry. Materials providing an improvement and conformance to increasing technical and ecological requirements play a crucial role in the sustainable development of resource- and energy-intensive cements and concretes. Over the past decades, an extensive resource base of natural and technogenic materials has been established for alkali-activated materials (AAMs) and is being continuously expanded with the rapid development of the alkali-activation theory and technology and the ongoing studies of many research groups around the world. In the ceramic industry, about 15-20 percent waste material is generated from total production and as of now there are no measures taken to recycle this waste or to utilise this effectively. The ceramic waste is also durable, hard and resistant to physical, chemical and biological factors. Combining all these factors and the idea of sustainability and AAM, the replacement of cement completely by ceramic waste appears to be a novel idea. Hence, this paper reviews the developments and possibility of using the ceramic waste as a binder material to form a geopolymer system. Preliminary laboratory trials made in this direction are also presented in the paper.