ENGINEERING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOL.1, NO.1, APR, 2017 72 Corresponding author Email: daddan@quest.edu.pk Dr. Daddan Khan Bangwar 1 , Dr. Abdullah Saand 2 , Manthar Ali Keerio 3 1 Assistant Professor, 2 Professor, 3 PhD Scholar, Department of Civil Engineering, Quaid-e-Awam University of Engineering, Science & Technology, Nawabshah, Pakistan Keywords: Amorphous silica, strength activity index, XRD, RHA, cement replacement. 1. Introduction esearch is being carried out to make the best use of waste material to minimize the environmental pollution caused the abundant left generated wastes. Rice- husk (RH) is one of the agrarian by-product materials constituting at around 20% of the weight of rice. It is usually composed of 50% cellulose, 25–30% lignin, and 15–20% of silica. RHA is generated from rice husk when the husk is burnt. Upon burning the husk, ash contained silica is produced and subsequently cellulose and lignin are removed. Since each ton of rice generates 40 kg of the ash [1]. RHA is a very fine pozzolanic material and is a highly reactive pozzolan obtained when rice husks are calcinated below the crystallization temperature at 780 0 C [2, 3]. RHA could be manufactured by controlled burning of the rice husk between 550 o C and 700 o C the burning temperature for 1 h converts silica content of the ash into amorphous phase[4, 5]. Silica in the ash goes through structural alterations depending on the temperature management it undergoes while burning. At 550–800oC an amorphous silica is formed and a crystalline silica is developed at a greater temperature. Rice husk ash blended concrete is exceptionally well in terms of strength and durability performance [6-8]. Usually after the extraction, the produced RHA is ground by using abrasion machine, however, [1] stated that non ground rice husk ash could be used to substitute 15% of Portland cement with similar mechanical and durability properties. The usage of ashes produced from the burning of other vegetable species as pozzolans in concrete have already been stated by numerous researchers [9-11]. The researchers [12-14] showed that by blending RHA as cement replacement material in concrete the wide-ranging enhancement in durability properties could be attain in concrete. The basic purpose of this study is to develop rice husk ash as a supplementary cementing material from a simple mechanism. 2. Experiential procedure 2.1. Material Preparation Locally available rice husk in the locality of district Nawabshah, Sindh Pakistan was obtained and was burnt in a drum type furnace made in the laboratory as shown in Fig. 1. Figure.1. Drum type furnace After burning the rice husk ash, it was allowed to cool approximately for 24 hours. After cooling, the extracted ash R Abstract: This article presents a study on the properties of Rice Husk Ash (RHA) and its possible utilization as a supplementary cementing material in the construction industry. RHA is usually extracted from the incineration of rice husk. The ash content in the husk is about 15-20% by the weight. Two samples of RHA1 and RHA2 extracted from burning of rice husk. The incineration of rice husk was done for three hours in a drum type burner in the laboratory and then further kept the extracted ash in muffle furnace at a temperature of 350 o C for two hours to get maximum amount of silica. The chemical characterization was carried out with the help of the Energy Dispersive Spectrometry (EDS) to check the silica content. It was found that the rice husk ash has 70.38% silicon dioxide, which meets the requirement of ASTM 618-03 for a pozzolanic material. The morphological characteristics were studied through Scanning Electronic Microscopic (SEM) and ash was found to be porous and multi-layered in nature. The X-ray Diffraction Rice Husk Ash as a Potential Supplementary Cementing Material