The increasing use of pervious concrete as sustainable and environment-friendly paving materials is primarily owed to its ability to reduce pavement runoff. The mechanical and transport properties of pervious concrete with 50% ground-granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS) replacement were examined. Open-graded 10 and 20 mm aggregates were used to attain porosity of 10%, 15%, and 20%. Polypropylene short-cut fibres were added to the mix. The clogging potential of pervious concrete exposed to dust was investigated. The results indicated that increasing the porosity led to a decrease in compressive and tensile strength. The fibre addition was effective in low-porosity concrete. Permeability was proportional to porosity and inversely proportional to aggregate size. After 40-year simulated dust exposure, the concrete permeability could be restored with the water flushing maintenance process. In comparison to Ordinary Portland cement concrete, pervious concrete incorporating GGBS is a more sustainable paving solution, offering a decrease in cost, heat island effect, and embodied energy, while also reducing carbon emissions by 54%.

MATEC Web of Conferences, open access proceedings in Materials science, Engineering and Chemistry

A range of thermal pretreatment conditions were used to evaluate the impact of high pressure thermal hydrolysis (HPTH) on the biodegradability of waste-activated sludge (WAS) under aerobic and anaerobic conditions. It was found that pretreatment did not increase the overall extent to which WAS could be aerobically biodegraded. Thermal pretreatment transformed the biodegradable fraction of WAS (X_H) to readily biodegradable COD (S_B) (16.5–34.6%) and slowly biodegradable COD (X_B) (45.8–63.6%). The impact of pretreatment temperature and duration on WAS COD fractionation did not follow a consistent pattern as changes in COD solubilization did not correspond to the observed generation of S_B through pretreatment. The pretreated WAS (PWAS) COD fractionations determined from aerobic respirometry were employed in anaerobic modeling and it was concluded that the aerobic and anaerobic biodegradability of PWAS differed. It was found that that thermal pretreatment resulted in as much as 50% of the endogenous decay products becoming biodegradable in anaerobic digestion. Overall, it was concluded that the COD fractionation that was developed based upon the aerobic respirometry was valid. However, it was necessary to implement a first order decay process that reflected changes in the anaerobic biodegradability of the endogenous products through pretreatment.