Examination of the effect of soma thermal power plant fly ashes and quartz waste dusts on the mechanical properties of concrete pavers and evaluation in terms of sustainability

With the development of technology and the change of living conditions in the world, the needs of societies and even countries have increased, which has led to the development and increase of industrialization and urbanization, and as a result, global problems such as environmental, natural pollution, and ecosystem degradation have been encountered. With these developments, the energy needs of countries are also increasing. In order to support sustainable production, the use of waste materials as alternative products in different sectors in order to increase their areas of use can solve the environmental pollution problem to some extent and allow for more economical production by eliminating costly operations such as storing, transferring and disposing of waste materials. The use of concrete paving stones is quite high in the construction sector due to reasons such as being durable, efficient, economical, functional and increasing the usage areas. Using fly ash, which is a thermal power plant waste, as a substitute for cement in the production of concrete paving stones, using quartz waste from factories producing surface material using quartz as a substitute for fine aggregate will be effective in many issues such as protecting natural resources, economic benefit and reducing environmental problems. In this study, the usability of the fly ash obtained from the Soma Thermal Power Plant operating in Manisa province, replacing cement with different percentages in concrete paving stones, replacing quartz waste dust taken from the factory producing surface material with different percentages in concrete paving stones, and the usability of concrete paving stones was investigated by preparing concrete paving samples. A total of 288 concrete paving stone samples were selected for each mixture, 3 for each test, from 12 different mixtures and 24 for each mixture, and in order to determine whether the samples meet the suitability criteria, size and appearance, water absorption rate determination, splitting tensile strength test, abrasion resistance determination and freeze-thaw resistance determination tests were performed on the prepared samples.