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Mechanical, non-destructive, and thermal characterization of biochar-based mortar composite

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Abstract

Sustainable materials present a significant revolution in the construction industry and exhibit tremendous potential to develop a green building material that can be adopted to lower the construction sector’s carbon footprint. This study details the development, mechanical and thermal properties of mortar produced using biochar derived from date palm leaves (BioCl) and date palm seeds (BioCs) as a cement additive. A detailed experimental protocol including flowability, compressive strength, the volume of permeable voids test, ultrasonic pulse velocity test, nondestructive crack identification, and thermal was conducted to understand the effect of adding biochar on the performance characteristics of mortar. The durability and mechanical test indicated that BioCl performed better than BioCs while both additive materials performed better than the control samples. Adding BioCl and BioCs to 0.75% and 1.00% improved the compressive strength to 7 and 5%, respectively, compared to the control samples. The ultrasonic pulse velocity direct and indirect method results were significantly reduced to a maximum of 22.54% and 20.46 with the addition of BioCl and BioCs in mortar. This further confirms the dense packing of biochar particles into the interfacial transition zone of the matrix. Biochar-masonry concrete blocks showed almost 41% lower thermal conductivity than control concrete, indicating biochar-based blocks’ high thermal performance.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Abbreviations

OPC:

Ordinary Portland cement

NDT:

Non-destructive testing

FA:

Fine aggregates

CA :

Coarse aggregates

UPV:

Ultrasonic pulse velocity

VPV:

Volume of permeable voids

BioCl:

Biochar concrete produced via date palm leaves

BioCs:

Biochar concrete produced via date palm seeds

f c ’ :

Compressive strength of concrete

T:

Time of UP wave transit

F comp :

Compressive strength

ITZ:

Interfacial transition zone

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Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support received from Taif University Researchers Supporting Project Number (TURSP-2020/276), Taif University, Taif, Saudi Arabia. Also, the authors are grateful to the Deanship of Scientific Research (DSR) at Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, IAU (Previously: University of Dammam), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for the financial support and guidance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil and Construction Engineering, College of Engineering, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, P.O. Box 1982, Dammam, 31441, Eastern Province, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

    Muhammad Arif Aziz, Khalid Saqer Alotaibi & Ammar Ali A. Al Eid

  2. Department of Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, P.O. Box 1982, Dammam, 31441, Eastern Province, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

    Mukarram Zubair & Omer Aga

  3. Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, College of Engineering, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, P.O. Box 1982, Dammam, 31441, Eastern Province, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

    Muhammad Saleem

  4. Civil Engineering Department, College of Engineering, Taif University, P.O. Box 11099, Taif, 21944, Saudi Arabia

    Yasir M. Alharthi

  5. Department of Building Engineering, College of Architecture and Planning, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, P.O. Box 1982, Dammam, 31441, Eastern Province, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

    Noman Ashraf

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  1. Muhammad Arif Aziz
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  2. Mukarram Zubair
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  3. Muhammad Saleem
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  4. Yasir M. Alharthi
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  5. Noman Ashraf
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  6. Khalid Saqer Alotaibi
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  7. Omer Aga
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  8. Ammar Ali A. Al Eid
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Contributions

MAA and MZ: conceptualization, methodology, writing—original. MS, YA, and MZ: supervision, validation funding and administration; NA, KO, and OA: formal analysis, review, and editing.

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Correspondence to Mukarram Zubair.

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Aziz, M.A., Zubair, M., Saleem, M. et al. Mechanical, non-destructive, and thermal characterization of biochar-based mortar composite. Biomass Conv. Bioref. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-023-03838-1

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