Reuse of Demolished Old Brick Powder in Brick Making: Fid-Bau Portal

Reuse of Demolished Old Brick Powder in Brick Making

Ramana, G. V. / Paul, Sarojini / Murthy, V. Ramana / Vikas, Kola

Brick earth has to satisfy the basic compositional requirements as per the engineering standards. However, at many places suitable brick earth may not be available. The indiscriminate use of top soil for brick making causes an enormous loss of fertile top soil which otherwise could be highly suitable for cultivation. Despite several advancements made for making alternative bricks, still clay bricks are the most sought-after material for walling. In view of this tendency for use of traditional bricks, an attempt is made to reuse the old demolished brick powder for making fresh bricks with an idea of sustainable use of top soil. For this purpose, different proportions of soil and brick powder in the ratio of 60:40, 50:50, 40:60 respectively were tried to make bricks, and subsequently, their physical and mechanical properties are compared with those of the normal bricks. The present study indicated that the old brick powder can be suitably mixed with higher plasticity soils even up to 50% without any difficulty in molding of bricks and the shrinkage of these soils could be overcome. The brick powder as a bulk non-plastic material is serving as a balancing material in these soils. Further, it is observed that these bricks made using old brick powder could be burnt over a lesser time period compared to traditional bricks without any compromise in strength, and also the edges are observed to be intact. Therefore, the waste demolished old brick powder can be a very useful bulk material in brick making even by using higher plasticity soils for sustainable building industry.