Publications

In the recent years, there have been considerable efforts all over the world to reuse by-products in order to sustainably conserveour environment. In this sense, rice husk is also an agricultural bi-product and its ash after being burnt has widely been used toreplace Portland cement in the construction industry due to the fact that it is rich in pozzolanic content. However, no studies havebeen conducted to identify the definite temperatures to which rice husk can be heated to produce the perfect qualities required forenhancement of concrete. This prompted us to find out whether utilizing ground unburnt rice husk would as well be fit to be usedin partial replacement of cement. This would save time and other resources used in heating rice husk to ash. This study evaluateshow different contents of rice husk added to concrete may influence its workability, water absorption and compressive strength ofconcrete with 0, 1.5, 2.5, 5, 7.5 & 10% cement replacement at fixed water cement plus ground rice husk at 0.5. The results werecompared to a controlled sample and the viability of adding ground rice husk to concrete was verified. For water absorption theresults were negative as addition of ground un burnt rice husk resulted in increasing water absorption of concrete which isgenerally not good for its durability purposes. Values of workability varied with addition of ground un burnt rice husk but stillwithin the allowable limits for concrete to be used on some construction works. Also, there was a break through on thecompressive strength with 1.5% replacement of cement with ground un burnt rice husk achieving the target strength. Basing onthis, we can therefore infer that cement can be reduced up to 15% with un burnt ground rice husk without compromisingcompressive strength requirements of concrete more especially in situations where water absorption is not very important.