The Effect of Alkaline Activator Components on the Properties of Fly Ash Added Pumice Based Geopolymer

Abstract

The effect of sodium hydroxide (SH) concentration and sodium silicate (SS) content in alkali activator on mechanical properties and wet-dry resistance of fly ash added pumice based geopolymer paste were investigated. In the study, the concentration of SH was used as 8, 10, 12 and 14 molar, while the weight ratio of SS to SH was used as 0, 1, 2 and 3. While the density of geopolymer paste samples increased significantly with the increase of SH molarity in mixtures with low SS content, it was less affected by SH molarity in mixtures with high SS content. For all SH molarity values, the compressive strength of the geopolymer paste samples increased with the increase of the SS/SH ratio, while a slight decrease was observed with the SS/SH ratio increasing from 2 to 3. However, with the increase of the SH molarity, the compressive strength of the samples was less affected by the SS content. As large cracks or splits occur in paste samples activated only with SH under the effect of wet-dry, their compressive strength could not be measured. The wet-dry performance of the paste samples activated with SS + SH was not affected much by the SH molarity and the SS/SH ratio and were close to each other. When looking at the microstructure studies, FTIR analyzes show that SS content provides a better geopolymerization, and SEM images show that micro-cracks relatively decrease with SS content.

Keywords

• Geopolymer materials
• durability
• pumice
• natural pozzolan
• green concrete

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