Influence of chemical composition of soda ash activated fly ash and copper slag geopolymer pastes on compressive strength

Abstract

The effect of the chemical composition of geopolymer pastes on compressive strength was investigated in high-calcium fly ash and copper slag blends. In synthesizing the pastes, soda ash at activator to binder ratio of 0.4 was used. The characterization of material samples and the hardened fly ash-copper slag pastes was conducted through X-ray fluorescence (XRF), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) for the major oxide and phase composition. The hardened paste cubes which were cured at 80 °C were tested for compressive strength at ages 3, 7, and 28 days to obtain the mechanical performance property of each respective mix. The findings establish the impact of variation in the individual material and paste composition on the compressive strength of fly ash-copper slag geopolymer. The result shows that increase in the SiO2/Al2O3 and Na2O/Al2O3 ratios of paste products of samples corresponded to an increase in compressive strength. Whilst Fe2O3 wt.% increase in products from slag addition and positively influenced the compressive strength as fillers. However, CaO had no positive influence on the matrix of the activated product. The optimal blend mix design was 40 wt.% of copper slag which achieved a 28-day compressive strength of 24.66 MPa.