Greener durable concretes through geopolymerisation of blast furnace slag

The eco-friendliness of concrete is quantified by parameters such as 'embodied energy' (EE) and 'embodied CO 2 emission' (ECO 2 e), besides duration of designed 'service life'. It may be noted that ECO 2 e is also referred as carbon footprint (CF) in the literature. Geopolymer (GP) is an inorganic polymeric gel, a type of amorphous alumino-silicate product, which can be synthesised by polycondensation reactions. The concrete reported in this paper was prepared using industrial wastes in the form of blast furnace slag, fly ash as geopolymeric source materials and sodium silicate and sodium hydroxide as activators. Many mechanical properties such as compressive strength, chloride diffusion, steel corrosion, rapid chloride permeability test and rapid migration test are compared with Portland cement.