Executive Summary : | Brick is the one of the key material for the construction of building and is being used from ancient time. Amongst all the bricks, the fireclay bricks are the well-known type of brick. The durability of brick exclusively depends on the chemical composition of raw materials and the bond formation during firing/ sintering of green bricks etc. Due to the industrial revolution, there are generation of different types of waste materials (by-product) from various industries such as rice mill (food processing industry), paper mill, thermal plant, steel plants, nonferrous extractive industries etc. [1-8]. Even researchers are trying to use saw dust (by product from furniture industry) and old glass materials (food & beverage industry), red mud, mine waste etc. in order to make durable bricks while using waste recycled materials [9-12]. Rice husk is basically an organic based waste by-product from the rice mills. Again there are 80% of industries of Warangal (Telangana State) belongs to rice mill; therefore rice husk is easily available, which can be used as an additive to control the structure-property behaviour of porous brick such as porosity, thermal conductivity and compressive strength etc. Rice husk consists of 50% cellulose, 25-30% lignin and 15-20% silica and 15-20% silica; this indicates it is a natural eco-friendly economically alternative material [5-7]. It is expected that use of rice husk in clay brick production may provide an economical contribution and energy efficient material. Researchers have been attempting to produce porous bricks with using rice husk; however, optimal combination of porosity and compressive strength is below the required range. Therefore, much attention is required to add different forms of rice husk such as raw husk, burnt rice husk (ash), burnt with carbon to make SiC whiskers etc. to enhance the compressive strength. It is expected that using rice husk as an alternative material to clay brick will lead to get reasonable good structure-property correlation and the research results will show a new direction for sustainable porous brick production. |