Ecological bricks produced from scheelite residue, stone powder, and cassava wastewater for non-structural masonry

Abstract

One solution to mitigate the environmental impacts of extracting mineral and vegetable residues is to use them in the construction industry, which is considered one of the largest consumers of mineral resources on the planet. Thus, this work conducted a study on the combination of scheelite, stone powder, and cassava wastewater with the addition of cement to produce an ecological brick that can be used as non-structural masonry in aiming to use waste and reduce environmental impacts. The percentage of each residue was determined after performing chemical and physical characterizations through a packaging analysis between the particles, obtaining a formulation with the same mass percentage of each solid residue, and adding cassava wastewater and cement. The technological assays showed results by Brazilian standards for cement soil, with water absorption values below 20%, simple compression strength close to or greater than 2 MPa, and low mass loss. Cement phases were observed in the SEM and XRD analyses, highlighting the contribution of packaging between the residues and the influence of cassava wastewater due to its acidity and binding properties, providing promising results for manufacturing ecological bricks.

Keywords

• cassava wastewater
• ecological brick
• scheelite residue
• stone powder
• sustainability