Palm Oil Fuel Ash: Innovative Potential Applications as Sustainable Materials in Concrete

Change of social needs and demands as well as significant increase in population have caused increase in the production of wastes, which mainly includes palm oil fuel ash (POFA), fly ash, rice husk ash and silica fume. The environmental impacts as a result of processes required for disposing these wastes have received considerable attention owing to the very severe pollution in the aspects of air, land, river, sea and groundwater. These can cause critical impact especially to the human health and society. Hence, the incorporation of these wastes as construction materials could be an innovative and sustainable approach to reduce the resulted impact stated previously. This article aims to report the current status of application of POFA. The POFA is a secondary product created from combustion of palm oil husk and shell. This article will first provide an introduction and the background of POFA. The properties of POFA in term of physical and chemical properties are also presented. Subsequently, POFA and its effects on fresh state property including workability and hardened state properties such as mechanical properties and durability. It is observed that when appropriate treatment processes are applied, POFA becomes highly pozzolanic and possesses improved concrete properties in fresh and hardened conditions. Future applications and researches of utilization of POFA in composite materials are also discussed.