Water reuse in the production of non-reinforced concrete elements: an alternative for decentralized wastewater management

Abstract

Replacement of water by treated wastewater in concrete production, totally or in part, could lead to great water economy. Therefore, this experiment evaluated compressive strength from non-reinforced concrete samples produced with a combination of potable water (PW) and treated domestic wastewater (TW) at four different proportions: 0, 50, 75, and 100% of TW in the mixture. Ten samples were prepared for each proportion and the samples were tested for axial compression on the 28th day after concrete preparation. The data were statistically evaluated to analyze the influence of TW in concrete quality. It was possible to note that there was no significant difference between concretes produced using only PW and those produced with 50 and 75% TW, but when only TW was used, the concrete compressive strength increased on average 17.7%, which indicates the good potential of water reuse in the production of non-reinforced concrete elements.