Did you ever try
to visit a home where you can see how waste products are transformed into
valuable and elegant pieces of objects? The papers and cardboards we usually
throw in trash cans can turn into vases, bowls, sculptures and a lot more as
paper mache. Simply, this is recycling and also through such process, a waste
product from burning pulverized coal in electric power generating plants known
as fly ash has found an extraordinary and purposive route towards our concrete
driveways as an admixture, improving the qualities of an ordinary concrete
driveway.
There is a high
demand for fly ash as a partial cement replacement, which means you don't use
it to totally replace cement as a raw material for concrete driveway rather you
just mix it with cement, because a driveway is a kind of flooring that gets
much load and traffic. Fly ash improves the durability of concrete driveways by
making them less permeable. But before we further discuss the advantages of
recycling this type of admixture, let us first find out how it is produced.
Fly ash is
mostly produced in coal fired electrical generating facilities. As these
facilities burn coal, a process called combustion; the mineral impurities in
coal such as quartz, clay and shale combine with gases and go out from gas
chambers as solidified spherical glassy particles. Fly ash as a by-product of
burning coal is a powdery cementitous material. If fly ash is not recycled, it
is disposed in landfills. Due to environmental concerns on carbon emissions
produced by manufacturing cement, some concrete projects add higher ratio of
fly ash in cement mix.
The combination
of fly ash and Portland cement in aid of moisture and temperature consideration
(40 degrees Fahrenheit), Fly ash reacts to the by-product of Portland cement
and water which is calcium hydroxide to form calcium silicates. This decreases
the settling time of concrete, making your concrete driveway gain strength. Fly
ash decreases the water cement ratio
which is beneficial in improving
the durability of concrete since less water is needed to bind its components.
In addition, the
presence of fly ash results to a variety of colors from buff to brow. It
improves the application of coating and sealer as premature curing is avoided.
For example if you apply acrylic cement coating to a prematurely cured concrete
driveway, the surface would just peel off. Because the addition of fly ash
produces slower curing time, bleed water has more time to come out into the
driveway surface.
From a waste
product in power plants to an advantageous admixture in construction projects,
fly ash has taken an extraordinary route in giving homeowners a chance to enjoy
the quality of their concrete driveways!
en he finishes that up next week, one more loose end will be tied up, and soon we'll be able to concentrate on getting settled into our old/new life in our new/old house.
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