Study of the behavior of polyester concretes containing ionomers as curing agents

Polyester concretes have been used in constructions for more than 20 years. This type of polymer concrete can advantageously replace traditional Portland concrete in situations that require fast consolidation of the material. Otherwise, polyester concretes are usually more expensive than Portland concretes. Part of the high cost of the polyester concretes is due to the fact that the aggregates used in the formulation of the concretes need to be dried prior to their incorporation into the polymer matrix. In this work, the use of different curing systems (methacrylic acid and maleic anhydride) was investigated to test the hypothesis that the introduction of acid functionalities into unsaturated polyesters based on isophthalic acid could both restrict the detrimental effect of moisture in the curing process and also improve interfacial interactions even in polyester concretes containing wet aggregates. In this work, as there was no search for ways to reduce cost of polyester concretes and also to contribute to the environmental preservation, unsaturated polyesters were synthesized from PET bottles and tested in the fabrication of concretes by reacting them with a conventional curing agent (styrene). Gel permeation chromatography, infrared spectroscopy, and electron microscopy were used to monitor and analyze the production of unsaturated polyester resins and concretes. Mechanical properties were also evaluated by compression tests. Results showed that methacrylic acid and maleic anhydride, when used as curing agents, led to the production of polyester concretes having higher mechanical properties in both dry and wet states than conventional polyester (based on isophthalic acid) concretes. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2008