Ricardo Calheiros Soares* and Luciano Alves de Queiros
Packaging contaminated with Portland cement, which is not easily recyclable and has a high cost and environmental impact for processing, is discarded in large quantities by the relevant civil construction sector. Using available literature, a method was developed to transform packages contaminated with Portland cement into a macroscopic by-product, through hydrolysis in sodium hydroxide (NaOH). The results demonstrate that the process can be sustainable for the disposal of bags contaminated with cement, which also showed an average loss of almost 0.1% of Portland cement per bag. Among other characteristics, the by-product obtained has an average density of 0.45 g/cm3 and most of it has a granulometry of less than 0.5 mm, facilitating handling and enabling reuse. This method is capable of including almost 6,000 bags of cement in a volume of 1 m3.
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Advances in Recycling & Waste Management received 438 citations as per Google Scholar report
