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Evaluating the effect of Arabic gum on the fresh, mechanical, durability, bond strength and physical properties of mortar; experimental work
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This study is actually about construction materials, not human health, it tests whether adding a natural substance called Arabic gum (a plant-based ingredient also used as a food thickener) to cement mixtures can make concrete stronger and more eco-friendly while reducing carbon emissions from cement production. Researchers found a small amount (0.2%) made the material stronger and more water-resistant, but too much actually weakened it, showing that with natural additives, more isn't always better. While this doesn't directly relate to personal health or microplastics, it matters for environmental health since cement production is a major source of global carbon emissions, and finding ways to use less c
The usage of cement in concrete and mortar is an industry with a high rate of negative effects on the environment and economy due to the high rate of the emitted amount of carbon dioxide with the huge amount of the required energy for this industry. Using new materials as an admixture or pozzolanic material in the concrete and mortar, especially natural materials for reducing the required amount of cement by increasing the mechanical properties and reducing required water for mix preparation have become the new trend to researchers. This manuscript deals with the usage of Arabic gum as the additional materials to the mix by nine different rates including (0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, and 0.8%), with investigating the role of each rate on the fresh, mechanical, durability, bond strength, and physical properties of the mortars. The findings in this paper’s experiments show that Arabic Gum acts through physical and chemical mechanisms, which oppose each other. As a natural plasticizer, it causes cement grains to disperse through electrostatic charges and steric hinderance, this increases fluid workability up to a peak flow of 129 mm at mix-9 (0.8% Arabic Gum, 17.3% above control). Hardened density is improved linearly by up to 4.8% (2264 kg/m3) at 0.8% Arabic Gum because of its optimization of particle packing and pore-filling ability, this led to the elimination of insulating air pockets, which in turn drove thermal conductivity up by 9.5% (up to 0.954 W/m.K). At the same time, moisture resistance was improved, because water absorption plummeted by up to 63.1% to a minimum of 0.41% due to high-viscosity biopolymer pore-blocking and hydrophobic film formation. On the contrary, mechanical and interfacial performance followed a sensitive, parabolic trend. Minor addition of Arabic Gum up to an optimal threshold of 0.2% at mix-3 improved 28-day compressive strength (34 MPa; +16.8%), flexural strength (12.22 MPa; +9.3%), and bond strength (0.499 MPa; 4.4%). But adding any more Arabic Gum over this 0.2% limit, caused higher mechanical degradation, high dosages (0.3–0.8%) caused extra air entrainment, and higher retarder for hydration reaction due to an un-hydrated organic gel layer, lowering 28 day compressive and bond strengths by up to 27.8% and 25.3% respectively at the maximum dosage. Also, this excess hydrophilic gel retained water and caused swelling, reversing standard drying shrinkage into a net expansion of 0.469 mm at 18 days. In the end, although Arabic Gum optimizes flow permeability and thermal dissipation, its use in structural applications should be limited to 0.2% to prevent mechanical capacity lowering.
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