Investigation of granite waste incorporated clay brick as a building material

The incorporation of various industrial waste materials as additives in the manufacture of clay-based products has been attracting a growing interest from researchers in recent years and is becoming common practice. The present work reports the changes in the behaviour of the clay material used in the brick industry due to additions of a granite sawing powder wastes, generated from ornamental stone processing industry in Madurai region, South India. The raw materials were characterized with respect to their chemical composition by XRF, mineralogical composition by XRD, particle size distribution and plasticity. Mixtures of clay and waste material (10-50 wt. %) were moulded by extrusion and sintered at temperature ranging from 600 to 900°C. Results of technological tests indicated that the granite waste proportion and firing temperature were the two key factors determining the quality of bricks. With 30 wt. % granite waste content, the reformulated briquette specimens sintered at 900°C exhibited better values of water absorption, porosity, bulk density and mechanical strength than the normal clay bricks produced in the industry.©2010 IJRSR All rights reserved.