Project Direction: An Overview of the Months to Come

Hello! welcome to the first post of the new project. Work is already underway so let's get started.

Already, there have been changes to the original project syllabus/plan due to confirmation/changes in timing of essential events.

First of all, burning of Coconut Shell Ash (CSA) has begun on a 25 kg batch of CSA from the previous part of the project, but we wanted to order 50 kg more of CSA, since we'll be burning off carbon until around 50% in weight of the CSA is left (doing the math, (25+50)*50% equals around 37.5 kg of CSA left). This much CSA is needed for making numerous test cylinders for strength testing (3 cylinders each for the 4 testing times of 7, 14, 28, and 56 days, times the 3 different weight percentages, a total of 36 cylinders) and for miscellaneous small-scale lab-testing.

Unfortunately, burning is constrained by both the size of containers for the oven, and by the shipping time of the material from China. Not only that, but we had to order 60kg of CSA this time since the supplier only does bags of 20kg now. This is sure to incur a massive shipping cost if we want to ship by FedEx plane, so I also need to find a job to pay for all of this.

I also contacted Cemex, and Eric said the earliest we could make the mixes of concrete was 3/21, so I swapped the plans around to do more literature review now rather than later. We may also not get the 56-day test results before presentations, but the 7 through 28-day results usually give a good idea of results anyway.

To Summarize the Important Parts:

The project will consist of 3 parts still:

Part 1: Burning of the Coconut Shell Ash, although time will be extended more than 2 weeks initially projected (perhaps)

Part 2: Lab testing at school to test other properties, such as geopolymerization (using alkaline liquid to "activate" the material, creating a cement with 0% actual cement).

Still finalizing ideas, but I believe washing the CSA with strong bases and acids before making concrete could have interesting results as well.

Part 3: Literature review with comprehensive data analysis. This has already started and will likely continue throughout the long concrete-making process. I hope to use SCM (cement replacement/supplements) abundance data (how much of each type is made and where), economic data (such as costs and tariffs/trade) and other factors I find while researching and reading numerous articles. This will help determine the future of the SCMs market in general, and the future use cases of CSA specifically. The important part of this part is summary and visualization for ease-of-use by other researchers or readers.

Okay that summary was as long as the first part, but I hope you see that I want this project to be an intersection of my scientific and humanity interests, under the umbrella of solving environmental issues. The climate crisis is not an isolated issue; it affects all parts of our society, and it's time to start treating it like that when we try and find solutions to this massive issue.

Until next time,

Max Polosky