THE EFFECT OF MIXING RATIO OF PET WASTE PLASTIC FROM BOTTLES ON BASIC PROPERTIES OF CONCRETES

Abstract

The non-biodegradation of plastics waste pollutes the environmental, which brings to the reuse of plastic waste as a potential material to  partly replace sand, one of the fine aggregate for the preparation of construction concrete. Polyethylene therephthalate (PET) is widely used. In this study, PET plastic waste was used at 3%, 6%, 9%, 12% (w/w) relatively to sand in the prepared concrete grade M350. After that, the obtained concrete was evaluated the effect of mixing ratio of PET waste plastic on the basic properties including slump, compressive strength and water absorption of concrete after 14 and 28-day curing. As results, the slump values of the plastic-mixed mortal decreased sharply when the amount of PET plastic increased from 3 to 12% as 35 to 92%, compared to the control sample. Similar results were obtained when measuring the water absorption. Compressive strengths after 14-day curing were decreased as 27.6 and 20.5 Mpa as the replacing ratio of sand was 3% and 12%, respectively. It was noted that the 28-day compressive strength value of the plastic-contained concretes were decreased as 19.6 Mpa when plastic waste was mixed at 12% relative to sand. It may due to the compatible difficulties of mixed material as plastic waste instead of conventional sand causing the reduction in compressive strength and enhancement of water absorption after 28-day curing.