The demand for sustainable alternative construction materials to cement in modern technology cannot be underemphasized. This paper presents a non-fired green brick with an agriculture residue namely, rice husk. Although, high plasticity brown clay deposits are widely distributed in Malaysia and rice husk is a well known agriculture residue, research works on non-fired green brick with rice husk...

This work applies established analytical techniques of physical sciences to Irish brick in order to gather evidence of ceramic technologies, provenance and sources of raw materials. Petrographic microscopy, X-ray diffractometry and scanning electron microscopy with an energy dispersive Xray diffraction attachment were used to study the brick of Rathfarham Castle, Dublin, built c.1618, where cla...

A positive matrix factorization model (US EPA PMF version 5.0) was applied for the source apportionment of the dataset of 37 NMVOCs measured over a period of 19 December 2012 – 30 January 2013 during the SusKat-ABC international air pollution measurement campaign using a Proton Transfer Reaction Time of Flight Mass Spectrometer in the Kathmandu Valley. In all, eight source categories were ident...

Bricks manufactured from dried sludge collected from an industrial wastewater treatment plant were investigated. Results of tests indicated that the sludge proportion and the firing temperature were the two key factors determining the brick quality. Increasing the sludge content results in a decrease of brick shrinkage, water absorption, and compressive strength. Results also showed that the br...

Time-dependent natural weathering processes suffered by historic bricks in Toledo (Spain) improve their physicomechanical properties by porous infill with gypsum, ettringite and mainly calcite. Both, these bricks and their experimental replica bricks, made from the original calcareous clays fired at the probable historical temperatures (700o 900oC), have been analyzed by X-ray diffraction, opti...

Brick is one of the most common masonry units as a building material due to its properties. Many attempts have been made to incorporate wastes into the production of bricks, for examples, rubber, limestone dust, wood sawdust, processed waste tea, fly ash, polystyrene and sludge. Recycling such wastes by incorporating them into building materials is a practical solution for pollution problem. Th...

The reuse of by-products and residue streams is an important topic due to environmental and financial aspects. Manganese clay is a residue of manganese ore processing and is generated in huge amounts. This residue may contain some radionuclides with elevated concentrations. In this study, the radon emanation features and the massic exhalation rate of the heat-treated manganese clay were determi...

Higher concentration of SO2 and particulate matters was reported in surrounding areas of coal-fired industries which influences the distribution pattern of plants. Sensitive plant species are abolished from such areas, however, only pollution tolerant species survive under stress conditions. The present study was designed to investigate the vegetation composition around coal-fired industries i....