62 / 2022-03-31 16:03:33

Novel green concrete using plasma-treated recycled PET

Green concrete,,plasma treatment,compressive strength.,Interfacial adhesion,Multiscale

Green concrete has great potential for application in construction to replace conventional concrete in order to minimize environmental impacts.  For example, more than 10% of the manmade greenhouse gas emissions originate from cement manufacturing process in cement factories.  It is estimated that more than 10 billion tonnes of concrete are manufactured globally every year.  The traditional disposal of the large amounts of construction waste in landfills is no longer an acceptable option, due to the limited landfill capacity.  The demand for green concrete in construction industry is spurred as it can reduce carbon footprint, limit greenhouse gas emission and extend the service life of landfills.  The adoption of recycled waste plastics such as waste polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles can reduce environmental problems as well as solve problems of lack of aggregate on construction sites.  However, the compressive strength, one of the most important properties of concrete, is reduced.  Without solving the problem of reduction in compressive strength, the practical application of green concrete is limited.  Plasma treatment has been widely used to modify the surface properties of polymer where the created favorable functional groups and the increased surface energy can increase the hydrophilicity and roughness of the surface.  Plasma modification has been regarded as a flexible and eco-friendly approach to offer excellent compatibility with microfabrication process.  The objective of this work is to study the effect of plasma treatment on the compressive strength of green concrete.  The effect of surface modification on the interfacial behavior between motor and PET is studied at multiscale to figure out the underlying reason for the variation in strength.  Our findings can provide a guideline for the control of plasma treatment enabling treated polymer with optimized properties.