Green-efficient masonry bricks produced from scrap plastic waste and foundry sand

Abstract

Lack of providing sustainable solutions towards resource efficiency through product-life extension, redistribution, remanufacturing, recycling, as well as re-engineering of wastes to maintain economic, society, and ecological balance, are the challenges facing the environment in the last decades. This article reports on the findings of an investigation into the utilization of scrap plastic wastes (SPW) and foundry sand (FS) in the production of green efficient bricks for masonry structures. Series of bricks were produced in varying ratios of 20 %, 30 %, and 40 % of the mass of FS. The produced bricks were tested for durability through acid, and water soaking and subsequently tested for compressive and tensile strength, to evaluate the brick's strength indices compared to conventional fired clay bricks. Results from this investigation showed that all the bricks produced from FS and SPW recorded 85 % strength greater than that of fired clay bricks. The ratio of 70 %: 30 % FS: SPW rendered the highest strength values followed by 60 %: 30 % and 80 %: 20 % for tensile and compressive tests, respectively. The result further showed that the compressive strength of SPW bricks is twice greater compared to that of clay fired bricks as they both recorded 29.45 MPa and 14 MPa, respectively. The SPW bricks portrayed low water absorption and retained their ultimate strengths after soaking in different acid concentrations. As such possesses the salient capacity in an acidic environment compared to clay bricks. The strength indices (qt/qu) of 0.18 to 0.28 as the proportionality of tensile and compressive strength is closely correlated to all the SPW bricks due to hydrophobic and deformability characteristics of the scrap plastic. The findings illustrated a rational approach towards the conversion of wastes into green-efficient construction material.