ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain.
Sec. Alternative Materials
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsus.2025.1695766
Sustainable Electrical Insulator Waste Management: An Eco-Friendly Concrete Development and Property Assessment with 3-E Analysis
Provisionally accepted
- Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India
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Green environment will result from the use of sustainable industrial waste in Eco-friendly concrete making. This study summaries the outcomes of mechanical properties, microstructure Characterisation and Environmental-Energy-Economic (3-E) analysis of four different M50 grade structural concrete using industry dumped out ceramic electrical insulator waste as conventional cement and granite aggregates substitutes. Optimum quantity of insulator powder in concrete making is found as 30%. The concrete with 30% insulator powder and 100% insulator aggregates (M4 mix) performs better by achieving significantly higher mechanical properties such as compressive strength, split tensile strength, flexural strength, dynamic and static modulus at 9.29%, 17.50%, 14.42%, 8.31% and 11.65%, respectively compared to reference concrete (M1 mix) (with 100% cement and 100% granite aggregates). Regression and statistical analysis predictions of R2 > 98% and Coefficient of Variation (CV) > 5% had a substantial influence on the mechanical properties of insulator concrete. The hydration mechanism of insulator concrete mix M4 increase the chemically bound water (Wb) to 3.24% as found by TGA. Similarly, 2.20% higher Si-O-Si bond wavenumber enhances the concrete strength as evaluated by FTIR. Based on the Eco-friendly analysis, the maximum specific energy consumption, CO2 emission reduction and Sustainability Index (SI) were achieved by M4 mix at 33.58%, 31.28% and 3.15 respectively. In light of these findings, insulator waste can be used as a cement and aggregate substitute in concrete with 36% of economical benefit.
Keywords: Insulator Waste1, Eco-friendly concrete2, Mechanical properties3, Regression Analysis4, Microstructure characterisation5, 3-E analysis6
Received: 30 Aug 2025; Accepted: 07 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 R and Saya Kannappan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Sekar Saya Kannappan, sksekar@vit.ac.in
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