Utilization of treated saw dust in concrete as partial replacement of natural sand Rafat Siddique a , Malkit Singh b, * , Sourav Mehta a , Rafik Belarbi c a Department of Civil Engineering, Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Patiala, 147004, India b Chitkara University Institute of Engineering and Technology, Chitkara University, Punjab, India c Department of Civil Engineering LaSIE, LA Rochelle University, UMR, 7356, CNRS, France article info Article history: Received 4 December 2019 Received in revised form 7 March 2020 Accepted 18 March 2020 Available online 23 March 2020 Handling Editor; Baoshan Huang Keywords: Saw dust Concrete Compressive strength Sorptivity Chloride permeability abstract The mining of natural material such as sand on large scale for use in construction of infrastructure in developing countries like India is posing threat to the environment. To save the environment, therefore, it becomes obligatory on the part of researcher to explore the utilization of industry by-products in place of natural material. In this study utilization of saw dust generated by wood industry in concrete has been explored. This article presents properties of concrete using different percentage of water and sodium silicate treated saw dust as replacement of sand. Saw dust passing through 4.75 sieve was treated with water and sodium silicate for 24 h before using in concrete. Natural sand was replaced with 5,10,15 and 20% water treated saw dust in concrete mixture. The effect of silica fume on properties of concrete containing 5% water treated saw dust was also studied by replacing 4, 8 and 12% cement with silica fume in concrete. It was observed that concrete made with 5% water or sodium silicate treated saw dust displayed compressive strength comparable to that of control concrete. However, for 10% replacement level, compressive strength and split tensile strength decreased by 30.30% and 32.19% respectively, at 28 days. Total charge passed, water penetration and capillary water absorption increased by 224%,153% and 117.4%, respectively, on use of 10% treated saw dust. The concrete mixture modified with sodium silicate treated saw dust showed remarkable improvement in respect of resistance to chloride ion penetration. As expected, the results showed considerable decrease in density of concrete with the use of saw dust as replacement of sand. Addition of sodium silicate treated saw dust resulted in ettringite formation in large quantity in concrete. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Rising population has created a crucial need for speeded hous- ing and infrastructural development in developing countries like India. The resources of natural materials required for building up the infrastructure are depleting gradually. The exploitation of re- sources of natural materials like sand has caused harmful envi- ronmental consequences. On the other hand, the industries are generating and dumping waste products on large scale. The accu- mulation of waste products is becoming source of environment pollution for the surrounding community. For the sustainable development and to save the ecosystem, it becomes imperative to utilize and reduce accumulation of waste products. Many research studies on utilization of waste materials like rice husk ash, fly ash, coal bottom ash, waste foundry sand, wood ash, granulated blast furnace slag etc. as partial substitution of natural materials in concrete manufacturing have facilitated to decrease the depen- dence on natural materials. Studies by Alwaeli, (2017, 2016 and 2013) and Alwaeli and Nadziakiewicz, (2012) also demonstrates that granulated lead-zinc slag, scale and steel chip waste can be used as construction material as partial replacement of natural sand in concrete manufacturing. Studies by Sepehri et al. (2018 and 2020) demonstrates that waste biomass can be used in treatment of Municipal waste water. Saw dust is the waste material generated by wood-based in- dustry. It is formed as a small irregular chips or small trash of wood during chopping of logs of wooden into different sizes. The di- mensions of saw dust depend on the varieties of wood and dimension of the saw teeth. Enormous quantity of saw dust is * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: bhangal_ms@yahoo.co.in, malkit.bhangal@chitkara.edu.in (M. Singh). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.121226 0959-6526/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of Cleaner Production 261 (2020) 121226