In recent years disposable masks have become a huge waste, but people have not found a way to reuse them. Therefore, a group of scientists in Washington, USA sought to make them a material to increase durability and improve the use value of concrete into cotton fiber reinforced concrete.
Actual studies show that concrete is less likely to crack when there are many small bonding fibers inside that are mixed after the finished product. From the above principle, the group of scientists has come up with a theory whether polypropylene or polyester fabrics - the main ingredients that make up masks, which are becoming garbage flooding the whole world, will replace those reinforcing fibers?
The solution has been through many stages, first the masks will be disassembled into individual materials, keeping only the cotton fabric. Next, cut the fabric into small fibers with a length of 5mm - 30mm. The fibers are then treated with a solution of graphene oxide to form a coating on the surface to increase the surface area so that they can easily adhere to conventional Portland cement. It is estimated that about 0.1% by volume of cotton fibers will be used as a binding component in concrete.
In fact, when cotton fiber cements were put to the test after 1 month, it was found that they had 47% higher strength than untreated cement and the process of adding fiber content reduced the compressive strength by 3%.
0 Comments