Currently, alkali-activated binders using industrial wastes are considered an environmentally friendly alternative to ordinary Portland cement (OPC), which contributes to addressing the high levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and enlarging embodied energy (EE). Concretes produced from industrial wastes have shown promising environmentally-friendly features with appropriate strength and durability. From this perspective, the compressive strength (CS), CO2 emissions, and EE of four industrial powder waste materials, including fly ash (FA), palm oil fly ash (POFA), waste ceramic powder (WCP), and granulated blast-furnace slag (GBFS), were investigated as replacements for OPC. Forty-two engineered alkali-activated mix (AAM) designs with different percentages of the above-mentioned waste materials were experimentally investigated to evaluate the effect of each binder mass percentage on 28-day CS. Additionally, the effects of each industrial powder waste material on SiO2, CaO, and Al2O3 contents were investigated. The results confirm that adding FA to the samples caused a reduction of less than 26% in CS, whereas the replacement of GBFS by different levels of POFA significantly affected the compressive strength of specimens. The results also show that the AAM designs with a high volume FA provided the lowest EE and CO2 emission levels compared to other mix designs. Empirical equations were also proposed to estimate the CS, CO2 emissions, and EE of AAM designs according to their binder mass compositions.
Keywords: CO2 emission; FA; GBFS; OPC; POFA; alkali-activated mix design; compressive strength; embodied energy; green mortar; recycled ceramics.