Novel Fibrous Concrete Mixture Made from Recycled PVC Fibers from Electronic Waste

Abstract

Electronic waste (e-waste) in concrete is the new revolutionary concept of sustainable concrete because it reduces the environmental pollution and solid waste problem. In this paper the extracted outer casing insulation of electrical wire was made into fibers. These fibers were added to the concrete at 0.6, 0.8, and 1% with respect to the weight of cement. Fibers were added to the concrete with the aspect ratio of 35 to make fiber reinforced concrete. The fresh and hardened properties like slump, fresh density, dry density, compressive strength, flexural strength, split tensile strength, and Young’s modulus of fiber-reinforced concrete and normal concrete was compared at the respective age of curing. In order to reduce the cement content and to enhance the properties of concrete, silica powder was added to the fiber-reinforced concrete with 10% replacement of cement with respect to volume of cement and the properties were compared with normal concrete and fiber-reinforced concrete. The experimental results reveal that the optimal percentage addition of e-waste fibers to the concrete was found to be 0.8% with respect to the weight of cement for both fiber-reinforced concrete and silica fiber-reinforced concrete. Thus, fiber-reinforced concrete and silica fiber-reinforced concrete using e-waste fibers was an alternative to normal concrete because it gives increased trend in properties and also reduces the amount of dumping e-wastes into nature.