Transforming waste disposals into building materials to investigate energy savings and carbon emission mitigation potential

This work aims to enhance the energy cost-saving potential of conventional mud-brick by including natural waste materials as insulators. The solid waste materials considered for mud bricks are rice husk, sawdust, coir pith, and fly ash. This work investigates the structural and thermoeconomic performance of four types of insulated mud bricks and three roofs of ferrocement, clay, and ceramic materials. The thermal properties of walls and roofs were measured as per ASTM D 5334 standards. The utilization of solid waste in mud bricks enhanced the structural properties and air-conditioning cost-saving potential of the mud bricks. The results also showed the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions with the usage of insulated bricks for buildings. The rice husk mud-brick wall showed better results of higher time lag, lower decrement factor, higher air-conditioning cost-savings, acceptable payback periods, and higher annual carbon mitigation values of 11.11 h, 0.24, 1.74 $/m(2), 1.17 years, and 33.35 kg/kWh, respectively, among all the studied multilayer walls. Among the roofs, clay tile roof showed a lower decrement factor (0.989), higher time lag (0.73 h), higher air-conditioning cost-savings (2.58 $/m(2)), lower payback periods (0.61 years), and higher annual carbon mitigation (21.73 kg/kWh). The results are in designing eco-friendly and energy-efficient envelopes for buildings.

Automated summary

This study enhances the energy-saving potential of conventional mud bricks by incorporating natural waste materials, improving structural properties, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The results show the effectiveness of using insulated bricks and eco-friendly materials in designing energy-efficient envelopes for buildings.