EFFECT OF SUGARCANE BAGASSE ASH AS PARTIAL REPLACEMENT OF CEMENT ON MORTAR MECHANICAL PROPERTIES

Being Brazil the most producer of sugarcane in the world, this commodity plays an important role in the country economy, especially in its northeastern region. The most attractive waste from sugarcane industry is its bagasse, which can be used in several manners. One of these ways is the electric energy cogeneration, a process that involves burning at high temperatures operations often producing a significant amount of waste referred as sugarcane bagasse ash. This type of ash is also generated in pizzerias that uses this material replacing the wood in its ovens. Recent researches indicates that the major chemical component of such ash is the SiO2 that exhibits great potential to be used as a mineral addition in concrete or mortars. The main objective of the research is to analyze the potentialities of using sugarcane bagasse ash come from sugarcane industry and pizzerias as a partial substitution of Portland cement to produce mortars. The mechanical properties of interest were the compressive and tensile strengths in early ages. To perform this evaluation, laboratory tests by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and X-Ray Fluorescence (WDXRF) were performed to obtain the chemical and mineralogical characterization of the material, as well as the amorphous index. Results showed that the sugarcane bagasse ash from pizzeria and sugarcane industry exhibited almost the same amount of 62% of amorphous material – about 60% - and the oxide content proved satisfactory. Additional tests to obtain the optimum amount of the material replacement indicated 15% as an ideal measure. Compressive and tensile strengths tests were performed in mortar samples of 5 x 10 cm showed excellent results in terms of immediate strength.