CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background

One of the current issues that most concern by society is climate change in the world.
The weather becomes unnormal and unpredictable. As a human, there are some actions
need to be taken before this situation is getting serious. One of the ways to save the
earth is to try to reuse unwanted material and replace natural resources with unwanted
material. One of the industries that bringing the most critical pollution to the
environment is the construction industry. Therefore, civil engineers nowadays are not
only about to design and make sure the structure is safe to be used by the society, but it
is also civil engineer responsibilities to minimize the environmental pollution impact to
the society either the material used for construction or construction method.
Concrete is one of the most common construction materials used in the world.
Concrete is a construction material manufactured by a mixture of cement, fine
aggregate, coarse aggregate and water. Due to the high amount usage of concrete from
the construction industry, the usage of natural resources is very huge and the natural
resources might be depleted in the future. Therefore, a replacement of natural resources
is needed to produce the desired quality and properties of concrete to minimize or to
avoid the usage of natural resources. The iron powder can be a replacement of fine
aggregate for the concrete mix to reduce the usage amount of the natural resources.
Iron powder is an industrialized waste from the steel industry that might harm
the environment and human health. Due to the physical, mechanical and chemical
properties of the iron powder, iron powder is suitable to be a part of ingredients in the
mix to manufacture of concrete. If all the unwanted iron powder is used to partially or
fully replace the sand in the manufacturing of concrete, the number of sands needed in
the market for the construction market is being reduced. Thus, the usage amount of
natural resources will be reduced. At the same time, the construction cost can also be
reduced by using unwanted material. Instead of buying new material, partially or fully
replaced sand by using iron powder, the manufacture of sand can be reduced and more
natural resources are saved.
1.2 Problem Statement
The natural resources are getting lesser and the pollution issue is getting serious
day by day. Iron powder is one of the by-products during the production of steel that
can be harmful to the environment if the iron powder did not handle carefully. Therefore,
the iron powder will be used to partially or fully replaced sand in concrete. By using
iron powder in the concrete is not only reduce the amount of waste in the world and
also reduce the construction cost. However, due to the iron powder contains the toxic
substances that may harm the environment, some agencies and government are against
to use it as reuse material.
Nowadays, environmental issue is the most critical problems faced by earth
and also the topic is the most concern by society. The aim of this project is to prove
that the sand in the concrete can be partially or fully replaced with iron powder
without harming the environment. This project will prove by conducting laboratory
experiments to determine the workability of fresh concrete and the leaching properties
of the treated iron powder. If this project is able to prove that iron powder can be used
to replace the sand, the advantage would not only reduce the number of wastes on the
earth, but it is also a big step to move forward to sustainable development in
construction fields.

1.3 Research Objective

1. To determine the physical properties of coarse aggregate and sand compared to
iron powder.
2. To determine the workability of fresh iron powder concrete mix compared to
the control mix.
3. To investigate the leaching properties of iron powder concrete mix after
encapsulated by the cement matrix.
1.4 Scope of Research
This is a laboratory research-based work to determine the possibility of partially
or fully replacing sand with iron powder. There will be laboratory tests to prove that
the iron powder can replace the sand. The tests are including density, specific gravity
and water absorption test to determine the physical properties of sand, iron powder, and
coarse aggregate. The sieve analysis is also carried out to have a similar distributed size
of aggregates to minimize the uncertainties of the project. Besides that, the normal
consistency test will be carried out to determine the amount of water needed for the
cement paste. The setting time test will also be conducted to determine the initial and
final setting time of the cement and cement iron powder mix. Not only that, the slump
test and compacting factor test will also be conducted to check the workability and
consistency of the fresh concrete mix. The workability of concrete is also checked after
24 hours by carrying out the hardening test. The last test is the leaching test to determine
the type and amount of leaching chemical by referring to different proportions of iron
powder concrete mix.
In the literature review, the manufacturing process of iron and iron powder as
by-products are studied to understand more about iron powder. The properties of the
iron powder, sand, aggregates, and cement are studied and compared with the existing
laboratory results done by other researchers. The workability of the fresh concrete mix
will also be studied and compare the laboratory result with other researchers.
After that, the result and discussion for the laboratory experiment are tabulated
and compare with the result of other researchers did to minimize the uncertainties of
the result that obtain in the laboratory result. Besides that, the discussion will talk over
the result of the laboratory experiment and listed down any errors and discrepancies
during the laboratory experiment.
At the end of the research, a conclusion will be made based on the objectives of
the research. It will decide that the iron powder concrete mix will pollute the
environment or it is environmentally friendly which will help to reduce the scheduled
waste in Malaysia. Besides that, the comparison of control mix and iron powder mix
will determine the workability of the fresh concrete mix and conclude the best
proportion of iron powder to replace the sand in the iron powder concrete mix.