| Abstract |
Until today bricks are still popular and ideal as building material despite having strong competition from other materials. Unfortunately, the long and popular traditional bricks such as fired clay brick and cement sand brick were using non-environmental friendly raw materials and binder. They were made using depleting and dwindling non-renewable natural resources such as clay and sand and often using polluted method for hardening process such as firing in kiln at high temperature and incorporation of Portland cement. This could possibly degrade the environment in the long run due to the continuous exploitation and extraction as well as pollution from the manufacturing and fabrication processes. Hence, as substitution to long and non-environmental friendly traditional materials, the utilization of industrial by-products as alternative raw material and binder seems significant for production of bricks. Coal-fired thermal power plant produces million tonnes of coal ash as an industrial by-product and could potentially substitute clay and sand as main raw materials. Meanwhile, ground granulated blastfurnace slag (GGBS), an industrial by-product from steel manufacturing factory could be used as binder and as substitution to Portland cement. Therefore, as a response towards the increasing in the awareness of using green technology building material and fabrication method, CaFoB was introduced. CaFoB (Coal ash Foamed Brick) was fabricated using green technology without firing method and mostly made using industrial by-products in the composition, hence could reduce dependency on clay, sand and Portland cement. Furthermore, CaFoB also incorporate foam technique during the fabrication process for lightweight. In general, the introduction of CaFoB could benefit the energy industry, construction industry and society in terms of optimization use of the industrial by-products into building materials application while protecting and preserving the earth |