The development in the construction sector and population growth requires an increase in the consumption of construction materials, mainly concrete. Cement is the binder in concrete, so increasing cement production will increase the energy consumed, as well as in the emission of carbon dioxide. This harmful effect of the environment led to the search for alternative materials for cement, as the waste or by-products of other industries is a promising solution in this case. Among these common materials are ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS) and cement kiln dust (CKD). This dataset describes the compressive strength and ultrasonic pulse velocity of mortar consisted of high content of GGBS and CKD combinations as a partial substitute for cement (up to 80%) at the ages of 1, 2, 3, 7, 14, 21, 28, 56, 90 and 550 days. This dataset can help the researchers to understand the behaviour of GGBS and CKD in high replacement levels for cement during early (1 day) and later ages (550 days). According to this understanding, the authors believe that the data available here can be used to produce more environmentally friendly mortar or concrete mixtures by significantly reducing the amount of cement used by replacing it with waste or by-products of other industries.

The increase in cement production as a result of growing demand in the construction sector means an increase in energy consumption and CO₂ emissions. These emissions are estimated at 7% of the global production of CO₂. Ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) has excellent mechanical and durability characteristics. Nevertheless, it is costly and affects the environment due to its high amount of cement, which may reach 800–1000 kg/m³. In order to reduce the cement content, silica fume (SF) was utilized as a partial alternative to cement in the production of UHPC. Nevertheless, SF is very expensive. Therefore, the researchers investigated the use of supplementary cementitious materials cheaper than SF. Very limited review investigates addressed the impact of such materials on different properties of UHPC in comparison to that of SF. Thus, this study aims to summarize the effectiveness of using some common supplementary cementitious materials, including fly ashes (FA), ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS), metakaolin (MK) and rice husk ashes (RHA) in the manufacturing of UHPC, and comparing the performance of each material with that of SF. The comparison among these substances was also discussed. It has been found that RHA is considered a successful alternative to SF to produce UHPC with similar or even higher properties than SF. Moreover, FA, GGBS and MK can be utilized in combination with SF (as a partial substitute of SF) as a result of having less pozzolanic activity than SF.

Cement is considered a base material in preparing blending mixtures that applying in various projects in the civil engineering field. Nevertheless, the cement production process cause indubitable negative environmental influences such as emitting CO2. The production of cement produces around 7% of the global CO2 emissions. Thus, searching for alternate binders in building processes to minimise or substitute cement has been one of the social problems. A by-product or waste products are among the potential alternatives to the mentioned problem. The present investigation involves the consumption of paper sludge ash (PSA) waste as cement replacement to produce environmentally friendly, cementitious material. Limited studies were addressed the PSA grinding time impact on mortar or concrete properties. Moreover, limited studies replaced the cement with high volume of PSA. Therefore, during this study, the effect of grinding time and replacement level (up to 50%) of the PSA on the surface electrical resistivity and compressive strength of mortar were investigated. Three grinding periods (in addition to without grinding), two replacement levels and three testing ages were considered. The results indicated that grinding the PSA for 10 minutes and use it to replace up to 50% of the cement content have similar mechanical and durability performance to ordinary Portland cement after 28 curing days. This innovative binder will also cause a major difference in decreasing the building materials cost and CO2 emissions.

Occurrence of iron in the potable water is responsible for several issues related to environmental, economic, and public health. Water remediation from iron is very vital step for ensuring the safety of potable water. Hence, many treatment techniques, such as chemical precipitation and reverse osmosis, have been proposed in recent literature. However, these methods are either expensive or possess some negative environmental impacts. This paper therefore studies the possibility of utilizing farms’ wastes (straw and reed) to produce a filtration system for remediating water from iron ions. This natural filtration cell (NFC) was manufactured by mixing equal weights of straw and reed (1:1 ratio), while the artificial iron solution (10.0 mg.L⁻¹) was synthesized by dissolving suitable amount of iron sulfates in deionized water. This artificial solution was treated in the NFC at different retention times (RTS) (ranging from 10 to 90 minutes) and initial pH of solution (IPS) (ranging from 4 to 9). The remaining iron in the solution, during the course of filtration process, was calculated utilizing a spectrophotometer and a standard iron cuvette test. The outcomes of this study revealed that 33.1% of iron was absorbed at RTS and IPS of 80 minutes and 7.0, respectively. Even though the research’s outcomes proved that the NFC possesses an acceptable capacity for iron removal from water, light brownish color was formed in the produced water, so another suitable treatment technique is needed to decolorize the produced.