Abstract
Large quantities of basic oxygen furnace (BOFS) are dumped in landfills of which the available land for land-filling of large quantities of waste is reducing all over the world. It is therefore im-portant to develop processes which beneficiates solid waste; BOF slag specifically. The present study attempts to investigate the potential to synthesize BOF slag based light weight construc-tion blocks. The effects of several factors on the UCS of BOF slag based light weight construc-tion blocks (LWCB) was also investigated. The test variables were molarities of sodium hydrox-ide (NaOH) (5 M, 10 M and 15 M); the solid to liquid ratio (20 %, 25 % and 30 %); the sodium silicate (Na2SiO3) to Na! OH ratio (0.5:1, 1:1, 1.5:1, 2:1, 2.5:1 and 3:1); the curing temperature (40°C, 80°C and 100°C). It was found that optimum synthesis conditions were 5M NaOH, 80°C and 1:1 Sodium Silicate: NaOH ratio. The LWCB composite met the minimum requirements for ASTM C34-13, C129-14a and South African standard (SANS227: 2007).