Proper Management of Quarry Dust that is Generated in Crusher Plants as Waste

Abstract

Quarry dust is the by-product produced due to the crushing procedure of stone crushing industry. The unavailability of a proper disposal method to this quarry dust is a huge problem faced by crusher plants. If this quarry dust can be used as a useful product it will be a good solution for this issue. It might be able to use as a substitute material for natural sand in preparation of cement mortar. In this research, a new cement mortar with an adequate quantity of quarry dust as a partial replacement of natural sand was designed. The effect of partial replacement of natural sand with quarry dust on the strength of cement mortar was studied. Here 1:5 cement:mortar mixture with 0.5 water:cement ratio was used as the standard test specimen and another five test specimens were tested by varying the quantity of quarry dust from 15% to 55% out of total sand volume at 10% intervals with varying water:cement ratio from 0.51 to 0.55 at 0.01 intervals with the increment of the quarry dust quantity respectively by keeping cement quantity and temperature constant. The cement mortar exhibits excellent strength with 45% replacement of natural sand with quarry dust with water: cement ratio 0.54.