Fly ash and concrete: a study determines whether biomass, or coal co-firing fly ash, can be used in concrete

Current US national standards for using fly ash in concrete (ASTM C618) state that fly ash must come from coal combustion, thus precluding biomass-coal co-firing fly ash. The co-fired ash comes from a large and increasing fraction of US power plants due to rapid increases in co-firing opportunity fuels with coal. The fly ashes include coal fly ash, wood fly ash from pure wood combustion, biomass and coal co-fired fly ash SW1 and SW2. Also wood fly ash is blended with Class C or Class F to produce Wood C and Wood E. Concrete samples were prepared with fly ash replacing cement by 25%. All fly ash mixes except wood have a lower water demand than the pure cement mix. Fly ashes, either from coal or non coal combustion, increase the required air entraining agent (AEA) to meet the design specification of the mixes. If AEA is added arbitrarily without considering the amount or existence of fly ash results could lead to air content in concrete that is either too low or too high. Biomass fly ash does not impact concrete setting behaviour disproportionately. Switch grass-coal co-fired fly ash and blended wood fly ash generally lie within the range ofmore » pure coal fly ash strength. The 56 day flexure strength of all the fly ash mixes is comparable to that of the pure cement mix. The flexure strength from the coal-biomass co-fired fly ash does not differ much from pure coal fly ash. All fly ash concrete mixes exhibit lower chloride permeability than the pure cement mixes. In conclusion biomass coal co-fired fly ash perform similarly to coal fly ash in fresh and hardened concrete. As a result, there is no reason to exclude biomass-coal co-fired fly ash in concrete.« less