CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS RESEARCH PROJECTS AT COVENTRY UNIVERSITY

 

RECYCLED GYPSUM                                           Back to home page

 

Full Title:  Gypsum Waste Reduction

Academic staff:  Dr P A Claisse,  Dr E Ganjian

Research Staff:  Seema Karami

Funding to CU:  £16,000 from industry, + £102,000 from EPSRC/NERC/industry

Research Partners:  Professor Alan Atkinson and Dr Mark Tyrer at Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine , Dr Gurmel Ghataora at Birmingham University

Industrial partners:  Lafarge Plasterboard and Huntsman Tioxide

Each year the titanium dioxide (white pigment) process produces 125,000 tonnes of impure (red) gypsum in the UK, and far larger quantities worldwide.  The construction industry also produces large quantities of waste gypsum in the form of plasterboard off-cuts and production rejects.  We have found that this material can be used to make "Controlled Low Strength Materials" which are low strength concretes, which are used extensively in the USA for trench backfill, and other applications in construction.

Following from an industrial contract to find uses for the red gypsum; we were awarded funds in the Faraday Mini-Waste programme from the Environmental and Physical Sciences Research Council, and the Natural Environment Research Council. 

The programme researched a range of ideas to use red gypsum in construction, or even to modify the process to produce clean white gypsum in place of the red gypsum.

 

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Placing a trial pour of "Controlled low strength material" made with waste gypsum and steel slag.