Abstract—Geopolymers or inorganic polymers are getting increasing attention due to being environmentally friendly and having great potential for applications in various industries. Geopolymers have three dimensional amorphous structure and can be synthesized from by products such as fly ash, blast furnace slag or geological materials such as kaolinite. In this experimental study F class fly ash was used as a raw material and geopolymer samples were synthesized by means of sodium silicate and 8 M sodium hydroxide solutions. These samples were cured at 80°C for three different durations (6h, 15h and 24h). Compressive strength tests were carried out at 7 and 28 days. The maximum compressive strength was found to be 40.35 MPa. The compressive strength values indicated that the curing conditions influenced the physical properties of geopolymer samples. As the curing duration increased, the compressive strengths increased. XRD and FTIR techniques were used to characterize the fly-ash based geopolymers. In FTIR spectra it has seen that geopolymerisation has been achieved successfully. The major fingerprint for the geopolymer has obtained. It was also observed that there was no significant effect of curing conditions on the microstructure of the samples. FTIR and XRD spectrums were nearly the same with increasing duration.
Index Terms—Geopolymer, mechanical properties, characterization.
E. Arioz and Ö. M. Koçkar are with the Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Anadolu University, Eskişehir, Turkey (e-mail: mkockar@anadolu.edu.tr).
Ö. Arioz is with the Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Anadolu University, Eskişehir, Turkey (e-mail: oarioz@anadolu. edu.tr).
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Cite: E. Arioz, Ö. Arioz, and Ö. M. Koçkar, "The Effect of Curing Conditions on the Properties of Geopolymer Samples," International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications vol. 4, no. 6, pp. 423-426, 2013.
