Bricks from Rice Hull Ash and Cow Manure

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, most of the ingredients used to create bricks come from fertile plains. This causes soil erosion which also leads to the destruction of the fertility of the land. in a study conducted by Vinish Kumar Kathuria in india in 2004, it was found out that farmers who leased their lands to brick kilns not only suffered monetary losses but also saw a decrease in the fertility of their land. for this reason, eco bricks from rice hull ash and cow manure were made.

METHODS

Three kilograms of rice hull were burned while the same amount of mud was cleaned and subjected to weathering for twenty-one days. After three weeks, five kilograms of cow manure and three kilograms of rice hull ash were mixed with five liters of tap water. Six bricks were molded out of the mixture with a 60:30:10 formulation. Three of them were dried under the sun while the other half were burned inside an oven for twenty-four hours. The bricks were tested for their compressive strength in Cavite Testing Center Tanza branch and were compared with one another through the use of One -Way ANOVA.

RESULTS

The sun-dried bricks exerted an average compressive strength of 79.67 psi which is comparably lesser than the fired brick that yielded an average compressive strength of 549.33. The statistical test for both the sun-dried and fired brick showed that the F value is greater than the critical value which caused the null hypothesis, that there is no significant difference between the compressive strength of the brick and the minimum compressive strength for building bricks adopted from the indian Standard, to be rejected. The sun-dried brick was not able to reach the minimum compressive strength for building bricks adopted from the indian Standard, which is 498 psi, while the fired brick was even able to exceed the minimum requirement.

DISCUSSIONS

The results show that firing a brick that is made from cow manure and rice hull ash is a better method for making a brick than sun-drying in terms of compressive strength especially in meeting the minimum requirement for building bricks according to indian Standards.