Sugarcane bagasse ash (SBA) is a solid waste obtained from the boilers of sugar factories after the combustion of sugarcane bagasse. Sugarcane bagasse ash mainly consists of amorphous silica and can be used as a supplementary cementitious material in the production of concrete. In the present study, the physical properties of sugarcane bagasse ash, namely, particle size distribution, surface area, specific gravity, morphology and chemical properties like elemental composition of SBA and ordinary Portland cement (OPC) have been investigated. The microstructural observations were made using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Elemental compositions were analyzed and images coupled to microanalysis by Energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). The microstructure observations and elemental characterization of cement concrete matrix was also carried out after 28 days of curing. Blended cement concrete specimens were prepared using SBA up to 30% in regular intervals of 10% by weight of pure Portland cement, coarse and fine aggregate, tap water and superplastisizer. SEM results indicates that substitution of SBA particles by Portland cement produces dense matrix as compared to control mix and EDS analysis shows fluctuations in calcium and silica concentrations as the cement replacement level increases in the blended cement concrete.

The present study involves the application of a water quality model QUAL2K for developing the BOD-DO model and evaluation of the results for a 50 km stretch of river Ghataprabha near Mudhol town of Bagalkot district, Karnataka. QUAL2K is a modeling framework for simulating river and stream water quality. Arc-GIS technique is used to obtain some hydro-geometric data of the river for input to model QUAL2K. For calibration and validation of the model, the BOD and DO values were monitored at six different locations. The calibrated model was validated to predict water quality using a different set of data under different conditions. The performance of the model was evaluated using statistics based on Standard errors (SE), Normalized Mean Errors (NME) and Mean Multiplicative errors (MME). The SE and MME values for BOD and DO during calibration are, 1.41 (1.12) and1.28 (0.90), respectively. The values in the bracket show MME. Corresponding values for the validation are 1.27 (1.09) and 1.10 (0.96). These results show that the values predicted by the model are in close agreement with measured values.