Valorization of Mining Side Waste Marble as Substitution of Cement and Sand in Manufacturing C25/30 Resistance Class Concrete

The demand for advanced machinery and professional mining operations is an Engineering and environmental challenge in Afghanistan. Marble mining generates a tremendous amount of waste; these wastes are deposited in landfills due to a lack of organized waste management. According to previous studies, marble wastes could be used in cementitious structures. Therefore, this research aims to incorporate waste marble in the concrete industry to preserve eco-environmental issues. A comparative study is conducted to replace partially cement/sand in concrete mix design with the exact quantities of waste marble and compared with an industrial product, a calcareous filler supplied by Omya SAS. Marble waste was collected from the mining site of Nangarhar- Afghanistan. The marble waste comprised 29% particle size < 63 μm, and the remaining 71% were sand particles. Mining site waste marble (MSWM) was incorporated at 3.5%, 4%, and 4.5% by the total volume of concrete. Reference concrete was designed to achieve the resistance of C25|30. The outcomes indicate some improvement in the workability and transfer properties of concrete with the increase in MSWM dosage. The optimal dosage of MSWM incorporation that remains concrete strength significantly was obtained for 4%. This dosage corresponds to 7.5% cement replacement and 12% sand replacement.