Development and characterization of sustainable lightweight geopolymer composites

Production of lightweight building materials attract the attention of the scientists worldwide with the need for reducing the structure deadweight, provide better thermal insulation for buildings, and cost less to transport. The current work focused on the production of lightweight geopolymer composites by the incorporation of aluminum powder and aluminum slag in various ratios for water-cooled slag/kaolinite sand composite; the activators used were 6% of equal ratio from sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate. The properties of the produced lightweight geopolymer composites were studied by measurement of compressive strength, bulk density, water absorption, FTIR, XRD and SEM imaging. Results showed the enhancement for both physicomechanical and microstructural characteristics with using aluminum powder and aluminum slag forming lightweight composites with densities below 2.15 g/cm³ depending on the studied mix composition. (author)