Plastic Waste Literature Review

Literature Review on Different Plastic Waste Materials Use in Concrete

Dr Muhammad Maqbool Sadiq (PhD in Structure Engineering, Assistant Professor at NUST, Islamabad)

Muhammad Rafique Khattak (Student of MSc Structure Engineering at NUST, Islamabad)

Abstract ¬¬¬¬–Plastic waste is silent threat to the environment and their disposal is a serious issue for waste managers. Now a day society does not have any alternative to plastic products like plastic bags, plastic bottles, and plastic sheets etc. In spite of all efforts made to limit its use but unfortunately its utility is increasing day by day. To circumvent this issue many efforts were made in the past to reuse the plastic waste but no significant results were achieved. On contrary concrete

They have used waste plastic of low density poly ethylene as replacement to coarse aggregate to determine its viable application in construction industry and to study the behavior of fresh and harden concrete properties. Different concrete mix were prepared with varying proportions (0%, 20%, 30% & 40%) of recycle plastic aggregate obtained by heat treatment of plastic waste (160-200 centigrade) in plastic granular recycling machine. A concrete mix design with 1: 1.5: 3 proportions was used having 0.5 water/cement ratio having varying proportion of plastic aggregate as replacement of crushed stone. Proper mixing was ensured and homogeneous mixture was prepared. A clear reduction in compressive strength was reported with increase in percentage of replacing plastic aggregate with crushed aggregate at 7, 14 and 28 days of casted cubes (80% strength achieved by replacing waste plastic up to 30%). The research highlights the potential application of plastic aggregate in light weight aggregate. Their research was narrowed down to compressive strength of concrete with no emphasis given to flexural properties of concrete. They suggest future research scope on plastic aggregate with regard to its split tensile strength to ascertain its tensile behavior and its durability aspects for beams and

Elzafraney et al. [2005] this study has incorporated use of recycled plastic aggregate in concrete material for a building to work out its performance with regards to thermal attributes and efficient energy performance in comparison with normal aggregate concrete. The plastic content concrete was prepared from refined high recycled plastics to meet various requirement of building construction like strength, workability and finish ability etc. Both buildings were subject to long and short term monitoring in order to determine their energy efficiencies and level of comfort. It was observed that recycled plastic concrete building having good insulation used 8% less energy in comparison of normal concrete; however saving in energy was more profound in cold climate in building with lower insulation. They recommended that efficiency of energy can further be increase if recycle plastic of high thermal capacity is used. They have suggested the use of recycle plastic aggregate concrete being economical and light weights are having high resistance to heat. The author should also incorporate the comparison of both buildings with regards to durability and