A Compressive Strength and Water Absorption Test on Brick Made of Wood Ash, Charcoal with Clay Bricks: A Comparative Study

Abstract

In India, bricks are usually made up of clay, and are generally produced in traditional, unorganized small scale industries. Bricks are important building material and about 140 billion bricks are annually produced by these industries. Brick making consumes larger amount of clay which leads to top soil removal and land degradation. Large areas of lands are destroyed every year especially in developing countries due to collection of soil from a depth of about 1 to 2 m from agricultural land. An important step in brick making is firing of bricks in brick kilns which causes serious environmental pollution and health problems. Brick burning largely influence the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This causes serious air pollution and also workers in brick industries are prone to respiratory diseases such as silicosis, pneumonocosis and musculo-skeletal disorders. To avoid all this environmental threats an attempt was made to study the behaviour of bricks manufactured using, different waste materials like Biochar (charcoal) and wood ash with sand and cement are used to manufacture bricks. The main aim of this project was to compare the compressive strength  and water absorption of the bricks, so for this purpose different percentage of materials were separately added 5%, 10% & 15% by weight and then the compressive strength and water absorption of the bricks was established. Then with the help of graph a comparison between both compressive strength and water absorption of bricks, made out of Biochar (charcoal) and Wood Ash was determined. After that bricks were made & sun dried and then cured for 7 days with the help of Compression Testing Machine, finally their compressive strength was calculated. from this test in this project work it was concluded that the wood waste from timber depot, furnitures, waste, construction waste are converted into biochar by pyrolysis method (charcoal) which gives the highest compressive strength and less water absorption.