Fly-ash based geopolymer mortar for high-temperature application – Effect of slag addition

Geopolymer materials have been gaining ground in the civil construction sector not only for having superior physical properties when compared to conventional cement, but also for being less harmful to the environment, since the synthesis of the geopolymer does not release toxic gases or require high energy costs. On the other hand, geopolymer materials like cementitious matrices have low flexural strength and have fragile breakage. To overcome these deficiencies, the insertion of fibers in geopolymeric matrices has been evaluated as a solution. Although most research on this practice focuses on the use of synthetic fibers, the use of natural fibers has been growing and brings as an advantage the possibility of producing an even more ecological material, satisfying the need to create eco-friendly materials that exists today in society. Thus, this paper aimed to, through the evaluation of research available in the literature, understand the behavior of fibers in geopolymer matrices, identify similarities and differences between the performance of geopolymer composites reinforced with natural and synthetic fibers and, understanding that it is possible, point out ways to optimize the performance of these composites.

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/13/15/2493/pdf

Natural Fibers as an Alternative to Synthetic Fibers in Reinforcement of Geopolymer Matrices: A Comparative Review.

Brazil is a country of continental dimensions and characteristics with enormous biodiversity of fauna and flora which confers a prominent role in the sector of extraction of agricultural products. However, one of the current challenges is the increasing amounts of agricultural solid wastes generated by different local production processes which end up resulting in enormous environmental liabilities. One way to effectively manage these agro-industrial wastes is by their application in the development of alternative cementitious materials such as mortars and concretes. Thus, the objective of this paper is to discuss the recent advances, challenges and future perspective of the application of some solid agro-industrial wastes generated specifically in Brazil and some other parts of the world in cementitious materials. The application of wastes from pineapple, sugar cane, açai, coconut and rice were explored and discussed. The discussion presented in this paper is anticipated to strongly contribute to the advancement of public policies that enable the real application of these wastes in the development of eco-friendly cementitious materials for civil construction. 

Possibilities for the application of agro-industrial wastes in cementitious materials: A brief review of the Brazilian perspective

Geopolymer concrete as green building materials: Recent applications, sustainable development and circular economy potentials.

Nowadays, there are still numerous challenges for well-known biomedical applications, such as tissue engineering (TE), wound healing and controlled drug delivery, which must be faced and solved. Hydrogels have been proposed as excellent candidates for these applications, as they have promising properties for the mentioned applications, including biocompatibility, biodegradability, great absorption capacity and tunable mechanical properties. However, depending on the material or the manufacturing method, the resulting hydrogel may not be up to the specific task for which it is designed, thus there are different approaches proposed to enhance hydrogel performance for the requirements of the application in question. The main purpose of this review article was to summarize the most recent trends of hydrogel technology, going through the most used polymeric materials and the most popular hydrogel synthesis methods in recent years, including different strategies of enhancing hydrogels’ properties, such as cross-linking and the manufacture of composite hydrogels. In addition, the secondary objective of this review was to briefly discuss other novel applications of hydrogels that have been proposed in the past few years which have drawn a lot of attention.

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Novel Trends in Hydrogel Development for Biomedical Applications: A Review

Eco-friendly geopolymer materials: A review of performance improvement, potential application and sustainability assessment

Lysozyme Amyloid Fibril-Integrated PEG Injectable Hydrogel Adhesive with Improved Antiswelling and Antibacterial Capabilities.

Computational analysis of performances for a hydrogen enriched compressed natural gas engine’ by advanced machine learning algorithms

Optical responses to incident lights with different incident directional angles or polarization angles are often of concern in the analysis of light scattering from plasmonic nanostructures. This leads to a multiple-excitation problem for the modeling and prediction of light scattering. An efficient and rigorous numerical method is presented to deal with this problem. In this method, the hybrid finite element and boundary integral (FEBI) formula is adopted to model the interior complex plasmonic materials and the exterior scattering space rigorously, and a low-rank compressed matrix factorization algorithm based on the FEBI framework is proposed to deal with the multiple-excitation problem efficiently. Numerical experiments are performed to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Tianhao Chen

Papers

Eco-friendly geopolymer materials: A review of performance improvement, potential application and sustainability assessment

Lysozyme Amyloid Fibril-Integrated PEG Injectable Hydrogel Adhesive with Improved Antiswelling and Antibacterial Capabilities.

Computational analysis of performances for a hydrogen enriched compressed natural gas engine’ by advanced machine learning algorithms

Efficient and Rigorous Modeling of Light Scattering From Complex Plasmonic Nanostructures With Multiple Incident Excitations