Study on the Effect of Micro-Incinerated Rice Husk Ash (MIRHA) and Fly Ash (FA) in Geopolymer Cement

The objective of this research is to study Fly Ash (FA) and Micro Incinerated Rice Husk Ash (MIRHA) as a cement binder replacement for Ordinary Portland cement (OPC). Both Fly Ash and MIRHA are categorized as pozzolonic materials in which when combined with calcium hydroxide, will exhibits cementitious properties. This supplementary cementitious material is proven to be effective to meet most of the requirement of durable concrete as well as cement. In the modern oil and gas industry, the utilization of both these materials as cement blend is gaining the attention of many. When compared to OPC, its application is generally cheaper, reduce the environmental effects especially on carbon dioxide (CO2) emission and improve the ordinary cement blend. Both materials are easily obtained from waste or by-products generated through industrial and agricultural activities. MIRHA was mixed with FA by the ratio of 1:1 and 3:7 without any addition of OPC, fine aggregate or coarse aggregates. The effect of curing time for 3, 7 and 14 days, water to binder ratio (w/b), water ratio and different mixture composition were studied through the observation of the final compressive strength result of the samples. The project is solely based on experimental analysis. The laboratory works will be carried out in Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP) Petroleum Engineering and Civil Engineering laboratories. The experiments start from the incineration process to retrieve MIRHA and Rice Husk Ash (RHA), sieving, mixing, blending of the raw material and finally compressive strength test. The results indicate that the compressive strength development was the highest for batch A3 at 5 MPa by the 14th day, with 30wt.% MIRHA to 70wt.% FA, 10% water and w/b ratio of 0.95 in which the ratio of MIRHA and water was the lowest. Though the targeted compressive strength was no achieved, it was identified that the reduced amount of MIRHA and water appear to be the main contributor to the increasing compressive strength of geopolymer binder.