Groundnut shell ash: a Local Construction Material in Concrete Production

Abstract

This research focuses on the use of groundnut shell ash as a partial replacement of cement in concrete production under an environmental friendly environment, it encourages the use of agricultural waste as a construction and building material, optimize the replacement of cement with groundnut shell ash (GSA) and showcase the influence of the groundnut shell in the compressive strength of concrete as an alternative local material that could easily partially or fully replace cement ratio in concrete. Cement in the production of the concrete mix was replaced with 0% of groundnut shell ash (GSA) as control, 5%,10%,15%, 20 and 25% replacement. A total of 100 cubes were cast using G20 concrete mix design of 1:1.5:2, and the cube specimens are tested for their compressive strength after curing for 3 days, 7 days, 21 days and 28 days respectively. Although the result shows that the compressive strength value of all the GSA/OPC blended concrete at 5,10,15, 20 and 25% replacement did not meet the required specification of concrete strength G20 after curing compare to standard or close to the control at 0%, but 5% has the highest level of performance better than the other percentage replacement and would be for the construction light concrete production. Thus the GSA/OPC concrete is considered to be an environmentally pollution frees construction material but not of economic advantage to contractors therefore it can be accepted and considered as a good development in building construction industries.