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Development of a leaching standard for the determination of the environmental quality of concrete

Objective

The utilisation of secondary raw materials in building products is stimulated in most EC countries from the poitn of view of recycling, conservation of natural resources and energy saving. For regulatory purposes, the protection of the environment and of human health require a judgement of the environmental impact of these secondary raw materials in cement-based matrices. A valid method for the prediction of the emissions from cement-based building materials to the environment and systematic knowledge on this subject are lacking.

The project aimed to select different leaching methods from the literature and to investigate whether these methods were suitable to study the leaching of concrete with and without fly ash addition. The final aim was to lead to a standard leaching method for concrete.
The experimental work has been successfully conducted and a new test method was tested and optimised in the frame of three successive interlaboratory studies. This test procedure for the determination of the environmental quality of concrete was proposed for discussion within the CEN/TC 51, working group 'Leaching'. The results of this project are fully described in the Report EUR 17869 EN (1997).
The project started with a short inventory of the literature, including the search for acceptable test protocols. The project hence consisted in establishing a draft protocol, to test it in the frame of interlaboratory studies investigating main parameters e.g. leachant, temperature, pH etc., and to validate the protocol by mean of an interlaboratory study involving 18 laboratories from 10 countries.

Topic(s)

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Call for proposal

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Coordinator

MaterialenBank Nederland
EU contribution
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Address
2,Rimburgerweg
6470 ED Eygelshoven
Netherlands

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Total cost
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Participants (6)