Development of thermally efficient fibre-based eco-friendly brick reusing locally available waste materials

Currently there are several kinds of building wall thermal insulation materials commercially available in Malaysia, however the issue with all these materials is that they are not eco-friendly. This paper attempts to reduce the dependence on non-eco-friendly insulation material by developing thermally efficient eco-friendly bricks. The prototype brick developed by incorporating locally available sustainable waste material was subjected to initial investigation on physical, mechanical, thermal and microscopic studies. The investigations revealed that the thermally efficient prototype mix design using glass powder and palm oil fly ash along with lime as binder is able to provide strength to the bricks. Also, usage of oil palm fibres were beneficial in lowering the thermal conductivity of bricks. At incorporation of 1% wt of OPF, compressive strength was found out to be 7.21 MPa and thermal conductivity was 0.39 W/mK, which indicates the proposed bricks can be an alternative to non-eco-friendly commercial common bricks. The advantage of the proposed bricks is two-fold: having low thermal conductivity will make it an energy efficient option, second is the usage of sustainable resources makes it an eco-friendly product. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.