Comparative Analysis of Green Concrete with Conventional Concrete - A Literature Review

In today's modern world there has been enormous development in the field of "Concrete Technology". With this development, there has also been enormous use of concrete in our day today life. Concrete mainly comprises of cement, sand and aggregate as its main constituents, which when mixed with water in correct proportion gives a byproduct called as "Concrete". The excess use of concrete has led to the environmental impact in terms of resources utilization as well as in terms of pollution. To overcome these impacts the concept of "Green Concrete" came into existence. Green concrete is a recent form to the existing types of concrete which resembles the conventional concrete but its manufacturing or handling of this concrete requires minimum amount of heat energy and causes the lowest harm to the surrounding environment. Since it deals into uses of the recycled aggregates and materials, it also reduces the extra load in landfills and mitigates the wastage of aggregates. Thus, the net CO2 emissions are reduced. The reuse of materials also contributes intensively to economy. Green concrete can be considered elemental to sustainable development since it is eco-friendly in nature. One of the methods for manufacturing of green concrete involves reduction of amount of cement in the mix, which added to the reduction the total cement consumption. The use of waste materials also solves the problem of disposing the excessive amount of industrial wastes. Green Concrete is a concrete in which one or more of its constituents are replaced by a resource saving material, which ultimately has reduced environmental impacts in terms of both, resource utilization and pollution impacts together. This paper discusses the importance of Green Concrete in the present day context and highlights its merits over conventional concrete which otherwise posing a serious threat to the environment through global warming.