Abstract

The fabrication of bricks commonly consumes relatively high natural resources. To reduce the carbon footprint in the brick production industry, repurposing industrial wastes in the making of sustainable bricks is a recent trend in research and application. Local wastes, such as oil palm shell (OPS), palm oil fuel ash (POFA), and quarry dust (QD), are massively produced annually in the palm oil-exporting countries. Moreover, QD from mining industries is hazardous to both water and air quality. For better waste management in marching towards sustainability, these wastes should be given their second life as construction materials. Therefore, this paper investigates the possibility of incorporating agro-industrial wastes into the brick mixture by examining their properties by means of several standardized tests. For the mix design, a 100% replacement of coarse aggregate with OPS, 20% replacement of cement with POFA, 20% cement weight of limestone as admixture, and 0 to 50% replacements of fine aggregate with QD are experimentally considered. The optimum mix of these wastes is preliminarily determined by focusing on high compressive strength as an indicator. Other examinations include splitting tensile, flexural strength, water absorption, and efflorescence tests. Although the agro-industrial waste cement brick is 18% lower in the strength to weight ratio compared to that of conventional, it is observed that it has better late strength development due to its POFA pozzolanic properties. Moreover, the proposed green cement brick is further checked for compliance with several standards for feasible use in the construction industry. Financially, the cost for the brick with the new mix design is almost equivalent to that of conventional. Hence, this green cement brick is reasonable to be employed in the construction industry to promote material sustainability for better waste management.

Highlights

  • Bricks are common building materials actively applied in the vast majority of construction works

  • As cement was introduced for concrete binder, clay brick was innovatively developed into cement brick to reduce the consumption of heating energy that is used to produce clay bricks

  • In order to incorporate all these local wastes into the concrete matrix and better waste management, this paper investigates, the design mix feasible to be applied in this proposed green cement bricks towards achieving the aim of manufacturing sustainable construction materials

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Summary

A Sustainable Reuse of Agro-Industrial Wastes into Green Cement Bricks

Wei Quan Chin 1, Yeong Huei Lee 1, Mugahed Amran 2,3,* , Roman Fediuk 4,5 , Nikolai Vatin 5 , Ahmad Beng Hong Kueh 6 and Yee Yong Lee 6. Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations

Introduction
Experimental Investigation
Materials
Mix Design
Methods of Testing
Slump Test and Density
Strength Test
Efflorescence and Water Absorption Tests
CompCreusbseive Strength
Day 14 Day 21 Day 28 Day 7 Day 14 Day 21 Day 28 Day
Splitting Tensile Strength
Flexural Strength
Effects of Drying Shrinkage
Code Specifications
Cost Analysis
Findings
Conclusions
Full Text
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