Resources, Conservation and Recycling 50 (2007) 293–305

The use of recycled aggregate in concrete

in Hong Kong
Chi-Sun Poon ∗ , Dixon Chan
Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University,
Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Received 28 April 2006; received in revised form 22 June 2006; accepted 22 June 2006
Available online 1 August 2006

Abstract

In 2004, over 20 million tonnes of construction and demolition (C&D) wastes were generated in
Hong Kong. Since the local landfills will be saturated in about 8 years, it is important to find a viable
way to reuse these waste materials as to alleviate the demand on public fill capacity. In order to tackle
the problem, the Hong Kong government has set up a temporary recycling facility in Hong Kong in
2002 for producing different sizes of recycled aggregate for use in various construction materials. This
paper summarizes the details of the construction of the Hong Kong Wetland Park which consumed
approximately 14,300 m3 of concrete prepared with recycled aggregate. However, as of today, the
recycled aggregate being reused is stringently restricted to recycled concrete aggregate (RCA). The
use of other wastes such as brick and ceramic tile aggregate is prohibited momentarily even the
combination of bricks and ceramic tiles constitutes a large portion of the C&D wastes. In order to
facilitate the wider use of the inert portion of the C&D wastes, a preliminary study was conducted
to investigate the possibility of using crushed brick and tile aggregate derived from construction and
demolition waste stream as a replacement of fine aggregate in concrete. The effects of the use of fine
crushed brick and tile aggregate as a 20 wt.% replacement of natural sand on the fresh and mechanical
properties are presented.
© 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Crushed clay brick; Crushed tile; Construction and demolition waste; Recycled aggregate

∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: cecspoon@polyu.edu.hk (C.-S. Poon), cechancw@polyu.edu.hk (D. Chan).

0921-3449/$ – see front matter © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2006.06.005
294 C.-S. Poon, D. Chan / Resources, Conservation and Recycling 50 (2007) 293–305

1. Background

Hong Kong, with a population of about 6.8 million and about 2.1 million household, has
a mountainous nature. As land is scare in this territory, the only way to gain additional floor
spaces is by demolishing old buildings and replacing them by high-rise buildings. In 2004,
there were over 20 million tonnes of construction and demolition (C&D) wastes generated
in Hong Kong. In the past, the inert portions of these C&D materials, such as rock, concrete
and soil, have been beneficially reused as fill materials in forming land for the fast growing
perpetual development. However, the increasing awareness on environmental protection by
the public has resulted in having most reclamation projects either been deferred or much
reduced in scale. This in turn results in a substantial reduction of the public filling capacity
to accommodate the surplus of C&D materials. If these materials are not managed properly,
it will also accelerate the depletion of the already limited precious landfill spaces. Hong
Kong is now facing a crisis on how to accommodate these surplus materials. Apart from
putting more efforts in minimizing its generation and the formation of temporary fill banks
for temporary accommodation of these materials, recycling is one of the means to alleviate
the demand on public fill capacity.
In order to facilitate the use of recycled aggregate in this region, the Hong Kong govern-
ment has set up a temporary recycling facility (Fig. 1) in 2002 and is actively promoting the
use of recycled aggregate in concrete. According to the quality control requirements of the
recycling facility, the recycled aggregate contained less than 0.5 wt.% of wood and particles
less dense than water and less than 1 wt.% of other foreign materials. Therefore, the recycled
aggregate used in this territory could be considered as recycled concrete aggregate. In the
current specifications, it is allowed to use 100% coarse recycled aggregate in proportioning
low-grade concrete (grade 20). In high-grade concrete (i.e., grades 25–35), only 20% coarse
recycled aggregate content is permitted. The fine portion (<5 mm), together with the coarse
portion of recycled aggregate, is usually prohibited in proportioning concrete mixtures as it
is very difficult to control the workability and dimensional stability of the concrete mixtures

Fig. 1. Photograph of the recycling facilities in Hong Kong (CEDD, 2005).

 C.-S. Poon, D. Chan / Resources, Conservation and Recycling 50 (2007) 293–305 295

Fig. 2. Photographs of buildings of the Hong Kong Wetland Park (Hong Kong Wetland Park, 2005).

prepared with both coarse and fine recycled aggregate, which combines for a high water
absorption value.

2. Case study—Hong Kong Wetland Park

Hong Kong Wetland Park (Fig. 2) is located at the north western part of Hong Kong
and is close to the border between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China. The first phase of the
project was opened in December 2000 and the whole project is scheduled for completion in
2005. Phase 2 of Hong Kong Wetland Park will have a 10,000 m2 visitor center comprising
exhibition galleries, AV theatres, souvenir shops, cafes, children play areas, classrooms and
a resources center. In the construction of the Hong Kong Wetland Park Phase 2 Project,
recycled aggregate is employed to replace part of the virgin aggregate used in the majority
of structural concrete where the quality of the recycled aggregate is shown in Table 1. The
highest concrete grade using recycled aggregate is grade C35 as summarized in Table 2.
The target slump is 100 mm but in some cases, 75 mm slump concrete is also used. The
project started in April 2003 and a total volume of around 13,000 m3 of concrete using
recycled aggregate has been used as shown in Table 3. The applications of the concrete
using recycled aggregate include pile caps, ground slabs, external works, mass concrete,
minor concrete works and concrete blinding depending on the grade of the concretes.
Based on the specification, the replacement levels of recycled coarse aggregate are 100
and 20% for concrete grades C20 (or below) and C25 (or above up to C35), respectively.
Because the experience in the use of recycled aggregate in concrete was immature at the
beginning of the project, cement contents for concrete mixes incorporating recycled aggre-
gate were deliberately increased by around 4% to compensate for the high water content
required by the recycled aggregate so as to maintain a similar water/cement ratio as shown
in Table 2.
Furthermore, some more recycled materials have been used in the Wetland Park (Tam,
2005). For example, bricks derived from the Antiquities & Monuments Office were reused
to create a feature wall that has both texture and history, without using other decorative
296 C.-S. Poon, D. Chan / Resources, Conservation and Recycling 50 (2007) 293–305

Table 1
Quality of the recycled aggregate used in the Hong Kong Wetland Park (Fong et al., 2004)
Requirements Limit Test method
Minimum dry particle density 2000 BS 812: Part 2
(kg/m3 )
Maximum water absorption 10% BS 812: Part 2
Maximum content of wood and other 0.5% Manual sorting in
material less dense than water accordance with BRE
Maximum content of other foreign 1% Digest 43
materials (e.g. metals, plastics,
clay lumps, asphalt, glass, tar, etc.)
Maximum fines 4% BS 812: Section 103.1
Maximum content of sand (<4 mm) 5% BS 812: Section 103.1
Maximum sulphate content 1% BS 812: Part 118
Flakiness index 40% BS 812: Section 105.1
10% fines value 100 kN BS 812: Part 111
Grading Table 3 of BS 882:1992
Maximum chloride content Table 7 of BS 882—0.05% by mass
of chloride ion of combined
aggregate

Table 2
Mix proportions of the concrete mixtures used in Hong Kong Wetland Park (Fong et al., 2004)
Concrete grade Type Designed slump (mm) RA (%) Cement content (kg/m3 ) w/c Ratio
C35 Recycled 100 20 395 0.466
C35 Conventional 100 0 380 0.473
C35 Recycled 75 20 380 0.468
C35 Conventional 75 0 365 0.479
C30 Recycled 75 20 360 0.486
C30 Conventional 75 0 345 0.507
C20 Recycled 75 100 300 0.607
C20 Conventional 75 0 290 0.603

Table 3
Information of recycled aggregate concretes used in Wetland Park (CEDD, 2005)
Concrete grade Area of usage Amount of recycled Average 28-day cube Standard
aggregate concrete strength (MPa) deviation
used (m3 ) (MPa)
Grade 35 Pile caps, ground slabs, 4811 47.0 4.9
beams and perimeter wall
Grade 35 External works such as 6752 48.6 NA
retaining walls
Grade 20 Mass concrete and minor 1355 31.5 NA
concrete works
NA, not available.
 C.-S. Poon, D. Chan / Resources, Conservation and Recycling 50 (2007) 293–305 297

materials. Rubble derived from the demolition of the old Police Headquarters in Hong
Kong was reused as some of the paving materials in the Wetland Park. The road base of the
Wetland Park was also built using about 15,000 tonnes of recycled aggregate. Moreover, the
construction of one of the bird hides employed the timber fenders that were rescued from
a ferry pier.

3. Significance and objectives of on-going research

However, as of today, the recycled aggregate being reused is stringently restricted to recy-
cled concrete aggregate. The use of other construction wastes such as brick and ceramic
tile aggregate is prohibited momentarily even the combination of bricks and ceramic tiles
constitutes a large portion of the C&D wastes. These wastes are usually disposed of at the
landfills in Hong Kong. As landfills will become saturated in about 8 years, it is important
to find a possible outlet for these inert materials. Therefore, a preliminary research was
conducted at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University on the possibility of reusing brick
and tile aggregate in concrete. The brick and tile aggregate was used as a fixed by weight
replacement (20%) of river sand. The objectives were to quantify the effects of the incor-
poration of fine brick and tile aggregate on some of the fundamental properties of concrete,
which would provide a direction for the future research on concrete prepared with these
types of C&D wastes.

4. Preliminary research

In fact, the use of the construction and demolition wastes in concrete has been extensively
studied and gaining wider acceptance in the world. Various researchers have shown that
recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) can be used in concrete and in the production of concrete
masonry blocks and bricks (Dhir et al., 1999; Poon et al., 2002). Other research results have
indicated that coarse brick and tile aggregate, which is also commonly found in the C&D
waste stream, can be used as a substitute of coarse natural aggregate in the production of
concrete (Khalaf and DeVenny, 2004; Khaloo, 1995). Nevertheless, there is little available
data on the feasibility of using fine clay brick and ceramic tile aggregate in concrete. Most
bricks and tiles, after crushing, would become aggregate of size less than 5 mm due to their
weak physical properties. Therefore, it is of importance to find an outlet for the fine brick
and tile aggregate. Recently, Poon and Chan (2006) investigated the use of fine crushed
clay brick in the production of concrete paving blocks prepared with RCA. It was found
that the use of fine crushed clay brick decreased the density, compressive strength and
increased the water absorption of the resulting paving blocks. Nevertheless, Poon and Chan
(in press) found that it was possible to replace 10% fine RCA by a combination of fine brick
and tile aggregate in the production of concrete paving blocks, which showed satisfactory
performances.
In this study, the effects of the use of the fine clay brick and ceramic tile aggregate
as a replacement of natural sand on the fresh and mechanical properties of concrete were
investigated. Although it is not recommended to use fine recycled aggregate together with
298 C.-S. Poon, D. Chan / Resources, Conservation and Recycling 50 (2007) 293–305

the coarse recycled aggregate in concrete, it is practical to only replace the fine natural
aggregate by recycled aggregate while the content of natural coarse aggregate remains
unchanged. The slump, slump loss, density, compressive strength, modulus of elasticity
and drying shrinkage of the aggregate in concrete were measured. Furthermore, two mixing
methods were used in this study, namely (1) the conventional method and (2) the double
mixing method (Otsuki et al., 2003), since it was found that the deployment of the double
mixing method was able to enhance the compressive strength of the concrete prepared with
coarse RCA by improving the interfacial transition zone between the RCA and the cement
paste (Otsuki et al., 2003).

5. Materials

In this experiment, the constituents used in the concrete mixtures included cement, 20
and 10 mm natural coarse aggregate, river sand, fine brick aggregate and fine tile aggregate.
The details of each constituent are recapitulated as follows.

5.1. Cement

Ordinary Portland cement, which was equivalent to ASTM Type 1 cement, was used in
preparing the concrete. The chemical composition of cement is shown in Table 4.

5.2. Coarse aggregate

In this study, 20 and 10 mm crushed granite was used as the coarse aggregate. The
physical properties of the coarse aggregate are shown in Table 5.

5.3. Fine aggregate

River sand was used as the natural fine aggregate. Its corresponding properties are shown
in Table 5.

5.4. Fine recycled aggregate

A clay brick wall sourced from a demolition site in Hong Kong was delivered to our
laboratory for this study. The clay brick was crushed manually to aggregate size of about
40 mm fragments before feeding them into an impact crusher to produce the fine aggregate
of 5 mm or less. The properties and grading of the crushed clay brick are shown in Table 5.

Table 4
Chemical composition of cement
Materials SiO2 Fe2 O3 Al2 O3 CaO MgO SO3 LOI Specific Specific surface
(%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) mass (g/cm3 ) area (cm2 /g)
Cement 19.61 3.32 7.33 63.15 2.54 2.13 2.97 3.16 3520
 C.-S. Poon, D. Chan / Resources, Conservation and Recycling 50 (2007) 293–305 299

Table 5
Properties of the coarse and fine aggregates
Properties Coarse aggregate Fine aggregate

20 mm 10 mm Sand Brick Tile

Density-SSD (kg/m3 ) 2660 2577 2640 2042 2199
Water absorption (%) 0.57 0.59 0.87 30.9 16.9
10% fines value (kN) 190 – – – –
Particle size distribution (mm)
50.0 – – – – –
37.5 100 – – – –
20.0 92.1 – – – –
14.0 36.0 100 – – –
10.0 8.35 95.9 – – –
5.0 0.41 13.5 99.7 98.1 87.7
2.36 – 1.18 99.3 82.2 41.9
1.18 – – 98.0 59.4 18.2
0.6 – – 89.1 41.4 6.8
0.3 – – 23.9 29.2 2.7

Low-quality ceramic tiles were purchased locally prior to the study. The dimensions
of the tiles were 150 mm × 150 mm with a thickness of about 3 mm. The size of the tiles
was reduced using a hammer before feeding the broken pieces into the impact crusher to
produce the fine aggregate. The properties and the grading of the crushed ceramic tiles are
shown in Table 5.

6. Mix proportions

A total of three concrete mixtures (Table 6), which had a free water-to-cement ratio (w/c)
of 0.55 and a target 28-day strength of 45 MPa, was prepared for each mixing method. The
first concrete mixture, which contained natural coarse and fine aggregate, was used as
a control mixture. In the second and third mixtures, 20 wt.% of the fine aggregate was
replaced by fine brick aggregate and fine tile aggregate, respectively.

Table 6
Mix proportions for the concrete mixtures
Constituents (kg/m3 ) Mix #1 (control) Mix #2 (20% brick) Mix #3 (20% tile)
Cement 410 410 410
20 mm 693 693 693
10 mm 350 350 350
Sand 642 514 514
Fine brick – 128 –
Fine tile – – 128
Free water 225 225 225
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7. Mixing procedures

Two mixing procedures were used in this study: (1) conventional method and (2) dou-
ble mixing method (Otsuki et al., 2003). In the conventional method, the coarse and fine
aggregate and cement were poured into the pan mixer before mixing the materials for
approximately 2 min. Subsequently, water was added to the bulk materials which were fur-
ther mixed for two more minutes before casting. In the double mixing method, the coarse
and fine aggregate was initially mixed for 1 min. Half of the required water was added
and mixed with the aggregate for one additional minute. After that, cement was added and
mixed with the aggregate for approximately 1 min. Finally, the rest of the required water
was added and the materials were further mixed for 90 s before casting.

8. Tests

Slump cone test was performed for all concrete mixtures immediately after mixing. In
order to assess the slump retention ability, the slump was also measured at 60 and 120 min
after mixing for each concrete mixture. The density of the hardened concrete was measured
using a water displacement method in accordance with BS 1881-114 (1983). The compres-
sive strength of the concrete mixtures was measured at 3, 7 and 28 days using 100 mm
cubes. The modulus of elasticity was measured at 28 days using 100Ø × 200 mm cylinders
in accordance with BS 1881-121 (1983). The loading rates were 200 and 100 kN/min in the
compressive strength and elastic modulus tests, respectively.
The drying shrinkage of the aggregate in concrete was also determined in accordance
with BS 812-120 (1989) using 70 mm × 70 mm × 285 mm prisms. In this drying shrinkage
test, the concrete was prepared according to the prescribed mix proportion between the
coarse aggregate, fine aggregate, cement and water. After casting, the concrete specimens,
covered with flat impervious sheets, were air cured at an ambient temperature of 20 ± 5 ◦ C
for 48 ± 2 h. Subsequently, the specimens were immersed in water at a temperature of
20 ± 2 ◦ C for 5 days ± 4 h. The wet length was then measured for the specimens before
placing them into an oven at a temperature of 105 ± 2 ◦ C. After 3 days ± 4 h of drying, the
dry length was measured for the specimens after they were cooled to room temperature.
The drying shrinkage of the aggregate was calculated as the difference between the wet and
dry measurements, expressed as a percentage of the dry length of the concrete prism.

9. Results and discussions

Table 7 shows the slump value for the three concrete mixtures using different mixing
methods. It is shown that the slump of the concrete prepared with the conventional mixing
method was much greater than that of concrete prepared with the double mixing method.
The initial mixing of aggregate with half of the required water in the double mixing method
allowed the water to penetrate freely into the pores of the aggregate, thus lowering the initial
free water content to lubricate the aggregate particles; therefore, a lower initial slump was
observed. In the conventional method, the cement slurry with a higher viscosity than water
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Table 7
Slump and slump loss for the concrete mixtures
Slump at different time intervals Conventional method Double mixing method
Mix #1
Initial slump 160 95
After 60 min 30 50
After 120 min 10 20
Mix #2
Initial slump 175 110
After 60 min 85 40
After 120 min 35 25
Mix #3
Initial slump 150 120
After 60 min 25 50
After 120 min 0 25

required a longer period of time to impregnate into the pores of the aggregate, resulting in
more initial free water to lubricate the aggregate particles. Therefore, a higher slump was
observed in the conventional mixing method. It was also found that the concrete mixtures
using the double mixing method had a better slump retention ability compared to those
using the conventional mixing method.
The density, presented as the average of three measurements, of the hardened concrete
is shown in Table 8. The partial replacement of sand by either fine crushed brick or tile
aggregate slightly reduced the density of the hardened concrete. However, there was no
noticeable difference between the densities of concretes prepared with the two different
mixing methods.
The compressive strengths measured at 3, 7 and 28 days of the concrete mixtures are
summarized in Table 9. The presented value is the average of three measurements. The
28-day compressive strength of all concrete mixtures met the target strength of 45 MPa.
It was found that the deployment of the double mixing method significantly improved the
compressive strength at all test ages. This was attributed to the enhanced properties of the
interfacial transition zone between the aggregate and the cement paste. It was interesting to
note that the 28-day compressive strength of the concrete prepared with 20% fine crushed
brick (50.4 MPa) or tile aggregate (55.3 MPa) using the double mixing method was com-
parable to that of the control concrete mixture (53.8 MPa) using the conventional mixing
method. Nevertheless, the compressive strength of concrete decreased when sand was par-
tially replaced by either fine crushed brick or tile aggregate when the same mixing method
was used.

Table 8
Density of the hardened concrete mixtures
Mixtures Conventional method Double mixing method
Mix #1 2390 2370
Mix #2 2340 2330
Mix #3 2370 2370
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Table 9
Compressive strength of the concrete mixtures
Ages Conventional method (MPa) Double mixing method (MPa) Improvement (%)
Mix #1
3-day 25.0 29.7 18.3
7-day 39.9 45.6 14.3
28-day 53.8 61.4 14.1
Mix #2
3-day 22.5 26.2 16.4
7-day 33.6 35.7 6.3
28-day 47.2 50.4 6.8
Mix #3
3-day 22.5 28.6 27.1
7-day 30.5 43.2 41.6
28-day 45.5 55.3 21.5

Table 10
28-day modulus of elasticity of the concrete mixtures
Mixtures Conventional method (GPa) Double mixing method (GPa)
Mix #1 29.5 30.4
Mix #2 27.1 26.5
Mix #3 26.8 28.9

The modulus of elasticity, presented as the average of two measurements, is summa-

rized in Table 10. It was clear that the incorporation of fine crushed brick or tile aggregate
decreased the modulus of elasticity of the concrete. In contrast to the results of the com-
pressive strength, the moduli of elasticity were similar between the concrete mixtures using
the two mixing methods. Since the stress–strain response of concrete is a function of the
elastic moduli of its constituents (Mindess et al., 2003), the mixing method has a relatively
smaller effect on the modulus of elasticity of concrete.
The relationship between the compressive strength and elastic modulus measured at 28
days is shown in Fig. 3 and a good correlation existed between these two properties. The

Fig. 3. Relationship between compressive strength and elastic modulus.

 C.-S. Poon, D. Chan / Resources, Conservation and Recycling 50 (2007) 293–305 303

Table 11
Drying shrinkage of the aggregates in concrete
Properties Mix #1 Mix #2 Mix #3
Drying shrinkage (%) 0.018 0.017 0.020

solid line represents the estimation of the elastic modulus of concrete using the equation
given by BS 8110-1 (1997) in terms of the cube compressive strength measurements. It is
shown from the figure that the measured value was more than 10% lower than the estimated
value using the BSI equation. In other words, the actual deflection of a structural element
would be greater than the estimated one.
The drying shrinkage of the aggregate in concrete was assessed in accordance with BS
812-120 (1989), which classifies the aggregate into two categories of use. If the measured
drying shrinkage is between 0 and 0.075%, the aggregate is suitable for all concreting
purposes. In contrast, if the measured drying shrinkage is greater than 0.075%, the use is
limited to positions where complete drying out never occurs, mass concrete surfaced with
air entrained concrete and members symmetrically and heavily reinforced not exposed to
the weather (BS 812-120, 1989). Table 11 shows that the drying shrinkage (average of
two measurements) of concrete with 20% natural sand replaced by fine crushed brick or
tile aggregate was comparable to that of concrete prepared entirely with natural aggregate.
Since the measured drying shrinkage was less than 0.075%, concrete prepared with 20%
fine crushed brick or tile aggregate could be used in any concreting purposes.

10. Significance of findings

The objective of this preliminary research was to provide a direction for the future
research on concrete prepared with fine brick and tile aggregate. This study provided some
preliminary results on the effects of the incorporation of the fine crushed brick and tile
aggregate in concrete. It was found that the adverse effects (i.e., strength reduction) due
to the use of fine recycled aggregate could be minimized by the deployment of the double
mixing method, which can be easily implemented in pre-cast concrete production.
Owing to the encouraging results of this investigation, a more comprehensive study will
be carried out in the future to determine the influence of a higher fine recycled aggregate
replacement level (>20%) on the properties of concrete. The durability of the concrete
prepared with fine recycled concrete aggregates will also be determined.

11. Recommendations

As of today, most research and field applications on recycled aggregate have been focused
on the coarse fraction. The use of the fine recycled aggregate is generally not recommended
as the aggregate has high water absorbability, which is believed to be detrimental to both
fresh and hardened properties of concrete. In the perspective of the authors, coarse and
fine recycled aggregate should not be used together to entirely replace both the coarse and
304 C.-S. Poon, D. Chan / Resources, Conservation and Recycling 50 (2007) 293–305

fine natural aggregate in concrete mixes because the strength and durability of concrete
would be adversely affected. Nevertheless, the coarse and fine recycled aggregate could be
used separately to replace the coarse and fine natural aggregate, respectively, in different
concreting projects under a variety of circumstances. Fine recycled aggregate constitutes a
large fraction of the end products of any C&D waste recycling operation. The recycled fines
normally contain a high amount of non-concrete contaminants such as clay bricks and tiles.
Therefore, it would be important that these materials can also be used as recycled aggregate
for concrete production.
Nevertheless, the bricks and tiles were obtained from one single source in this study;
therefore, future research should also focus on the effects of the variability of the qualities of
bricks and tiles on the properties of concrete. However, before more comprehensive data are
published, it is advisable to use fine recycled aggregate that contains brick and tile aggregate
as a low replacement level (i.e., <20%) of fine natural aggregate in secondary concretes as
to alleviate the demand on landfills. As the problems related to freeze–thaw cycles and
de-icing salt does not exist in a sub-tropical area like Hong Kong, One of the predominant
applications for concrete made with fine brick and tile aggregate is in the production of
non-structural concrete products such as road curbs and road barriers.

12. Conclusions

The following conclusions can be drawn based on the results of this study:
1. The deployment of the double mixing method reduced the initial slump and slump loss
of the prepared concrete.
2. The density of the hardened concrete slightly decreased as natural sand was replaced
by fine crushed brick and tile aggregate. However, the density was not affected by the
mixing methods.
3. The compressive strength of concrete decreased as the fine crushed brick or tile aggregate
was used as a 20 wt.% replacement of sand.
4. The deployment of the double mixing method significantly improved the compressive
strength of concrete.
5. The modulus of elasticity of concrete prepared with fine crushed brick and tile aggregate
was lower compared to that of natural concrete.
6. The influence of the deployment of the double mixing method on the elastic modulus of
concrete was negligible.
7. The drying shrinkage of the aggregate in concrete was less than 0.075%, which indicated
that the use of fine crushed brick and tile aggregates as a 20 wt.% replacement of sand
was suitable for all concreting purposes.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Environment and Conservation Fund, the Woo
Wheelock Green Fund, and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University for financial support.
 C.-S. Poon, D. Chan / Resources, Conservation and Recycling 50 (2007) 293–305 305

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