Investigation of strength characteristics of cement bagasse ash mortars using full factorial approach

The cement industry is one of the largest embodied energy consuming and CO2 emitting industry. It is found that to produce one kg of cement, it requires 4.2MJ of energy and liberates about one kg of CO2 which is one of the important greenhouse gases as the global warming reason. The partial replacement of ordinary Portland cement by agricultural waste is an alternative solution for decreasing the CO2 emission and to minimize the embodied energy of cement. In this study, the effect of sugar cane bagasse ash from three different sources, i.e. from Pandavpura, Nanjangud and Kuntur were collected. The bagasse ashes were ground until the particles retained on a 150µm sieve.The physical and chemical properties of the samples were tested. The tests conducted on the cement mortar are the flow table test and compressive strength test at 0, 10, 15, 20 and 25% replacement of cement by weight with different water cement ratios of  0.3, 0.35 and 0.4. From the experimental results it was found that water demand for the mortar increases with increasing percentages of bagasse ash due to larger particle size and high porosity of bagasse ash. It was also observed that from all the sources an average strength of 100% 108%, 101%, 97% and 94% were attained for 0, 10, 15, 20 and 25% replacement of cement by bagasse ash at  28 days