Performance of lightweight foamed concrete partially replacing cement with industrial and agricultural wastes: Microstructure characteristics, thermal conductivity, and hardened properties

The building industry, which emits a significant quantity of greenhouse gases, is under tremendous pressure due to global climate change and its consequences for communities. Given the environmental issues associated with cement production, geopolymer concrete has emerged as a sustainable construction material. Geopolymer concrete is an eco-friendly construction material that uses industrial or agricultural by-product ashes as the principal binder instead of Portland cement. Fly ash, ground granulated blast furnace slag, rice husk ash, metakaolin, and palm oil fuel ash were all employed as binders in geopolymer concrete, with fly ash being the most frequent. The most important engineering property for all types of concrete composites, including geopolymer concrete, is the compressive strength. It is influenced by different parameters such as the chemical composition of the binder materials, alkaline liquid to binder ratio, extra water content, superplasticizers dosages, binder content, fine and coarse aggregate content, sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate content, the ratio of sodium silicate to sodium hydroxide, the concentration of sodium hydroxide (molarity), curing temperature, curing durations inside oven, and specimen ages. In order to demonstrate the effects of these varied parameters on the compressive strength of the fly ash-based geopolymer concrete, a comprehensive dataset of 800 samples was gathered and analyzed. According to the findings, the curing temperature, sodium silicate content, and alkaline solution to binder ratio are the most significant independent parameters influencing the compressive strength of the fly ash-based geopolymer concrete (FA-BGPC) composites.