REINFORCEMENT OF POND ASH BED WITH RECRON 3S

Abstract

A huge amount of ash pond is being generated by the thermal power plants and other such processes involving combustion of coal in developed and developing countries. It has a hazardous effect on environment and human beings. Some of the largest coal reserves are there in India hence, it is one of the largest producers of coal and coal based thermal power plant installations. The current rate of deposition of Pond ash in India has reached 160 million tons per annum. Around 90 sqkm acres of precious land is used for the storage of abandoned Pond ash. But itscurrent of utilization rate of ash is only around one/third of its total production. The fly ash is disposed in the ash ponds. This practice leads to an ever-increasing ponding area for storing ash and causes environmental issues for the people living around the industrial area including thermal power plants. The developmental projects like construction of highways and roads has taken a boost in the recent years. This requires a huge amount of natural soil and aggregates to be either excavated or deposited. The opportunity cost for such development is an environmental and economic issue. These issues need to be addressed by adopting some alternative methods. Pond ash is one such by-product which can be used as material for filling in some of the geotechnical constructions. It is a non-plastic and lightweight material. The present work describes the effect of moisture content, degree of compaction, synthetic fiber as a reinforcement on various geotechnical properties of pond ash are studied. A series of tests including direct shear test, CBR test, light compaction as well as heavy compaction test, unconfined compression test was performed to estimate the strength characteristics of compacted pond ash using polyester as a reinforced material. Physical properties of the pond ash were studied by performing tests like specific gravity test, grain size distribution test by mechanical sieve analysis. This study is helpful for the successful application of pond ash in different fields such as embankment construction, road base and sub-base construction, designing of retaining walls etc. It also provides an ecofriendly approach for the disposal of pond ash