# Performance of Concrete with Waste Granite Powder: The Effect of Superplasticizers
## 1 Introduction  
With its flexibility and low cost of materials, production and maintenance, concrete has become the most selected material in the construction industry. The concrete industry is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and the largest consumer of natural resources worldwide, because over 10 billion tonnes of concrete are made every year [1]. The world population growth and technological evolution are resulting in greater production of concrete, to construct residential houses and commercial buildings, a reduction of natural resources such as aggregates and water, and an increase of greenhouse gas emissions as a result of cement production; consequently, concerns about the world environment will increase in the future. As well as concrete, cladding stones are one of the highly demanded materials in the construction industry. According to Figure 1, Iran is one the major producers of stone, especially granite, and consequently of its by-products. Granite stone is one of the highly used building materials and leads to a high amount of waste, amounting to almost 50% of the volume of the final graniteproducts, throughout its processing and extraction [2; 3]. Granite waste has accumulated over the years and only negligible amounts have been used, while the rest is dumped resulting in environmental problems. At the moment, nearly 25% of the total area of the industry premises is occupied by the by-products that are dumped in open yards [4]. Open sky mining, as in the case of granite and other type of building stone quarries, leads to environmental problems, such as obstruction of drains in the rainy season, dust-related nuisance, and air pollution (from fine particles of slurry, sized less than 363 microns, becoming air borne). Slurry affects the productivity of the land as a result of decreasing porosity, and water absorption and also percolation. Additionally, due to long-term deposition, slurry dumping areas are not able to support vegetation and remain degraded, while the finer particles seriously influence underground water availability and stop the flow regime of aquifers [5]. In addition, cement is the most environment-pollutant component of concrete. The cement industry releases more than 500 thousand tonnes of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide into the atmosphere [6] and is also responsible for 7% of the released carbon dioxide (CO\({}_{2}\)) in the world [3]. Waste granite powder (WGP) is a suitable choice for cement replacement due to its high silica content. A reduction in waste generation helps preserve the environment and the economy of the granite stone industry by promoting value-added products from granite stone waste [4]. A study by [PERSON] et al. [3] obtained the influence of \"granitic-quarry sludge waste\" incorporation on the durability and mechanical performances of mortars. They state that the chemical content of granite waste complies with the chemical requirements in ASTM 618 [7] regarding pozzolanic materials. In general, most of granite waste has the same chemical composition and can, therefore, be used as pozzolanic matter to produce concrete. They reported that, if the particles' size is even finer than that of cement particles, an improvement of almost 70% can be seen in the resistance to chlorides. Also more resistance against alkali-silica reactions will result from finer particles when granite powder is used as 10% replacement of cement. [PERSON] et al. [8] showed the feasibility of granite and marble waste as a green substitute to cement. In this study, both waste by-products were shown to be non-reactive materials and may act as a filler according to the chemical analysis and particle size distribution. With increasing replacement ratios of cement with marble and granite waste, the slump tends to slightly decrease. [PERSON] [9] used granite powder at 5%, 8%, 10% and 15% as cement replacement and filler in concrete.