The Effect Of Natural Retarder On Geopolymer Concrete With Different Curing Regime

Gcopolymer concrete is an alternative environmentally friendly product to replace
Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) concrete as main construction material around the
world. '['his eco-friendly concrete material developed because of the needs to reduce the
greenhouse gases emission, minimize waste and save the non-renewable resources as the
effect of Ordinary Portland Cement production. This research was proposed to obtain the
optimum mix proportion and curing method for geopolymer concrete with cast in-situ
applications. Fly ash has been used as a source material for this research work while the
alkaline solutions used in geopolymerisation is a combination of sodium hydroxide
(NaOH) and sodium silicate (Na2SiO3). Different curing regimes have been applied to
cure the geopolymer concrete to find the best curing method. Sucrose was utilized in the
mixture to produce workable geopolymer concrete which is not too stiff and easily
hardened. The compressive strength test done on the geopolymer concrete sample
showed that external exposure curing provided superior performance compared to other
curing method. It was also supported by the observation at microstructure level through
FESEM test.