Studies on iron tailings towards usage for paving blocks manufacture

Abstract

Disposal of mill tailings is one of the major problems in mining industry. Investigations are being done all over the world to utilize tailings for useful purposes. The scope of this work is to study the utilization of iron ore tailings in manufacture of concrete paving blocks. Five reference mixes were prepared using cement, jelly dust and baby jelly. Ten paving blocks were prepared from each type of mix, out of which five specimens were cured for 7 days and five were cured for 28 days. By using sand and tailings as fine aggregates, two modified mixes were prepared by replacing jelly dust partly in reference mixes. Similar to reference mix, five mix ratios were made and ten paving blocks were prepared from each type of mixtures. From each set of paving blocks, five specimens were cured for 7 days and the other five specimens were cured for 28 days. Laboratory tests were conducted to assess water absorption and compressive strength of specimens, and graphs were plotted for their comparison among each type of respective mix ratios. In all the comparisons, compressive strength of tailing based mix was higher than the respective reference mix. Similar trend is shown by the graphs plotted for water absorption. © 2010 CAFET-INNOVA TECHNICAL SOCIETY. All rights reserved.