Environmental sustainability through recycling incineration bottom ash for the production of autoclaved aerated concrete

Municipal solid waste incineration bottom ash (IBA) has great potential to be utilized for civil engineering applications. This paper is to investigate the characteristic of gas generation from IBA and to study the potential of IBA as aerating agent to replace costly aluminum powder and as silica source to partially replace silica flour/fly ash in the production of autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC). Results show the aeration capacity of IBA used in this study is about 1% that of pure aluminum powder by mass. Finer particles, higher alkali molarity, and higher reaction temperature encourage the reaction and more gas is generated per gram of IBA. Type of alkaline solution does not seem to be an important factor for gas generation from IBA. Several exemplary lightweight mortars and AACs were produced by incorporating IBA as aerating agent. It is highly plausible IBA can be used as aerating agent to replace pure aluminum powder in the production of normal aerated concrete. IBA-AACs with density ranging from 600 to 800 kg/m3 were successfully synthesized by using IBA as aerating agent. For a given density, the compressive strength of IBA-AAC is higher than that of AAC due to the formation of more uniform pore structure with smaller pore size in IBA-AAC.