Biochar come filler ecologico per migliorare le prestazioni sostenibili del cemento.

The increasing population has been generating an increase in the demand for construction to meet the needs of shelter, work, and recreation, this situation has increased the consumption of construction materials. Global warming makes it necessary for the process of manufacturing traditional materials to be more efficient and environmentally sustainable. ??Nowadays concrete is the most produced and used construction material in the world and one of its components is cement. In recent years, cement production has reached more than 4 billion tons, however, it is a process that requires large quantities of non-renewable raw material, with a high energy consumption and potentially contaminating, being responsible for the production and the placement of 6% of CO₂ emitted into the atmosphere each year, which translates into serious environmental consequences. ??On the other hand, the generation of organic waste (biomass) has become a problem for the states, since the dumping of these wastes, due to their low recycling rate is causing serious concerns due to the associated contamination of the soil and the water, the large tracts of land necessary for its disposal, the emission of methane and other greenhouse gases during the degradation process, in addition to the management costs. ??Recent studies have shown the energy potential of the biomass treated with thermochemical processes with limited oxygen such as pyrolysis or gasification, obtaining bio-oil and syngas that can be used as biofuels and also, the biochar, the solid by-product, the latter has been used by various Researchers in the field of construction, they have verified their potential application as green inert in cementitious pastes, mortars and concretes, improving mechanical properties such as resistance to compression and considerable improvements in flexural strength and ductility. ??The present work is based, then, on the use of woody biomass through biochar as inert to improve the mechanical resistance in the traditional materials based on cement, as well as to know the influence of the cost of its application, to face the challenge of the materials of construction responsible with the environment. ??In the laboratory activity, the ligneous origin biochar, obtained through gasification was added, in different percentages with respect to the weight of the cement. From the final results, it was found that the biochar microparticles are very useful to improve the mechanical properties of the cementitious compounds. Adding 2% of biochar showed an improvement in flexural strength, tenacity, and ductility since the particles have the property of deflecting the fracture, generating a much more tortuous and less linear trajectory than the typical fracture fragile cement which results in an increase in fracture energy. Regarding the resistance to compression, compared to pure cementitious paste, there was an improvement of 6% at 7 days, ??As regards the economic field, it was shown that the use of biochar (2%) in the mixture does not represent an increase in the final cost, this fact could open interesting scenarios for it application, in addition, various studies have succeeded in replacing part of the cement with these pyrolyzed particles, thus obtaining a more economical mixture than plain mix because of the lower amount of cement.