High performance concrete incorporating ceramic waste powder as large partial replacement of Portland cement Dima M. Kannan a , Sherif H. Aboubakr b , Amr S. EL-Dieb a , Mahmoud M. Reda Taha b,⇑ a Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, United Arab Emirates University, United Arab Emirates b Department of Civil Engineering, University of New Mexico, USA highlights  High performance concrete mixtures incorporating up to 40% ceramic waste powder as large partial replacement of cement can be produced.  High performance concrete mixture incorporating large content of ceramic waste powder showed high strength and excellent durability performance.  Ceramic waste powder acts primarily as a filler rather than pozzolanic material.  Producing high performance concrete can be an excellent source for recylcing large quantities of ceramic waste powder. article info Article history: Received 22 October 2016 Received in revised form 27 February 2017 Accepted 12 March 2017 Keywords: Ceramic waste powder (CWP) High performance concrete Frattini test abstract Ceramic waste powder (CWP) is produced during ceramic tile polishing with potential environmental pollution. CWP is silica-rich, alumina-rich and fine particle size material. High performance concrete (HPC) mixtures incorporating 10–40% CWP as replacement of Portland cement by mass were evaluated. Mechanical, durability and microstructural investigations of HPC mixtures were performed. It is shown that concrete incorporating CWP as large replacement of cement has high strength and excellent durabil- ity. Microstructure investigations showed that incorporating CWP did not make significant difference in cement hydration compared with cement without CWP. Performance improvement is explained by the low water/cement ratio of the reference mixture enabling CWP to create dense packing particles. Ó 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd. 1. Introduction Portland cement production accounts for around 5% of the glo- bal carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions, which is categorized as a major greenhouse gas. While increasing demand on concrete is essential and associated with rapid global development and construction industry growth, cement is the primary and most expensive com- ponent of concrete mixture. Partial or full replacement of cement is considered a sustainable solution toward decreasing the environ- mental impact of cement production and will also contribute to sustainable concrete. This paper investigates the possibility of uti- lizing ceramic waste powder (CWP) as partial replacement of cement in high performance concrete (HPC) mixture that is charac- terized by relatively high cement content and low water content. CWP produced during ceramic tile polishing contributes toward environmental pollution. We suggest that using CWP can enable a significant reduction of cement in HPC mixtures without detract- ing from the concrete’s performance. Irassar et al. [1] studied the utilization of CWP as pozzolanic materials and reported that incorporation of ceramic waste with Portland cement simulates hydration due to enhancement of effec- tive water-to-cement ratio in the system. However, it was claimed that with replacement between 8 to 40% no pozzolan activity was observed at early ages, while good pozzolanic activity was observed at 28 days. Pokorny ´ et al. [2] showed that incorporation of CWP reduced compressive, bending strength, and thermal properties, while improving thermal insulation. For similar ceramic waste, Vej- melková et al. [3] showed that CWP slowed compressive strength development, and the 28 days compressive strength reaching 90% of the reference concrete with no CWP. Similarly, Heidari and Tava- koli [4] and Pacheco-Torgal and Jalali [5] reported reduction in early age compressive strength of concrete with an increase of CWP content but with minor strength reduction at later ages. Wang and Tian [6] showed that pozzolanic activity and strength of con- crete incorporating CWP preceded that incorporating fly ash. How- ever, addition of CWP reduced the heat of hydration and increased http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2017.03.115 0950-0618/Ó 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd. ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: mrtaha@unm.edu (M.M. Reda Taha). Construction and Building Materials 144 (2017) 35–41 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Construction and Building Materials journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/conbuildmat