Development of an energy- and water-saving manufacturing technology of brick products

Abstract

In the work, the carrying of realizing three problems in the manufacture of brick products, namely, energy saving, water saving, and processing of large-scale waste (ecological problem), are considered. Four types of bricks have been obtained and investigated: red clay, red clay-milled cullet mixture, red clay-milled basalt (tezontle) mixture, and red clay-milled glass-milled tezontle mixture. To form the semi-finished products, water or wet waste of activated sludge were added to the dry mixtures. It is established that the presence of low-melting glass into double and triple compositions reduces the sintering temperature of ceramic products down to 900-1000 °C and sintering time to 8-12 h while maintaining good strength properties of ceramics. This means that the energy-saving technology is provided. The use of waste activated sludge (biowaste) with high water content allows us to exclude the introduction of water into dry mixtures at the stage of molding. This means that the water-saving technology is achieved. The introduction of a different content of burnt out bio waste contributes to the formation of brick products of different porosity. Variations on mixtures compositions and sintering modes make possible to synthesize ceramics of different applications: as a stone products, bricks for external and internal walls, porous bricks, and a filtering ceramics.

Keywords

• Red clay
• Cullet
• tezontle
• Water
• Biowaste
• Sintering