Ecological brick . Bricks built with materials that do not degrade the environment and whose manufacture is also respectful of it, compared to the usual bricks whose manufacture and materials are not so harmless.
Ecological bricks have qualities similar to those traditionally used for the construction of houses. Therefore, its use does not result in loss of quality since, like most organic products, they undergo more evidence of their viability than traditional ones. The bio-construction is not at all at odds with a comfortable, beautiful and safe house.
Summary
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- 1 Emergence
- 2 Types of ecological bricks.
- 3 Advantages
- 4 Disadvantages
- 5 Curiosities
- 6 External links
- 7 Sources
Emergence
The idea arises in 1999 when the retired civil engineer Henry Liu, worked in one of the thermal power plants where about 45 million tons of ash ended up in the trash every year. And so it emerged, in order to avoid the environmental impact of these wastes. For this good idea, Liu has received the support of the National Foundation for Science (NSF) of the United States and in 2007 he won the prize of the best inventions of the year from Popular Science magazine .
Currently, Liu chairs the Freight Pipeline company, which tries to make its ecological bricks, which he has called “Fly-Ash Brick”, spread all over the world.
Types of ecological bricks.
The ecological bricks are differentiated by the materials with which they are constructed. There are several proposals of bricks with different components among them are:
Bricks made of fine ash, safer than predicted.
- CoalAshes : This was an idea of a civil engineer, Henry Liu, in 1999, with a double ecological benefit. With this material, the bricks are obtained at 212 degrees in 10 hours and the 45 million tons of waste used by coal thermal power plants are used. Among its advantages over conventional bricks, in addition to its ability to assess the ashes, there are its properties: they are lighter and consume less energy by needing only a cooking temperature of 60º C (normal bricks require ovens that reach about 900º C). In addition, they are even able to absorb small amounts of toxic mercury metal from the air .
Hemp brick: Recyclable and they say is stronger than concrete.
- Hempand straw: This ecological brick has already been used by Spanish companies. Despite the apparent fragility of the materials, its hardness is similar to conventional ones. They have the disadvantage of being more expensive but they isolate very well from the outside temperature. This means saving energy costs in heating and air conditioning, so its price is soon amortized.
Plastic brick
Peanut shell brick.
- Used plasticand peanut shells : The ecological bricks of this material are a creation of the Experimental Center of the Economic Housing of Argentina who assures that they are hard, light and economic insulators. In addition to producing energy savings, they allow recycling of waste for their production.
Advantage
- Less damage to nature, since its manufacture requires less energy and waste as well as the recycling of other waste materials.
- They are better insulators of cold and outside heat, which means that less energy is spent at home.
- In some cases they are cheaper than conventional ones, but when this is not the case, being better insulators, energy savings amortize the difference.
- The materials of the ecological bricks make them lighter and more manageable for the worker, speeding up construction time and reducing expenses.
Disadvantages
The disadvantage of ecological bricks is that they are beginning to enter the market and in some areas they are not yet available and must be ordered. They also have another disadvantage derived from the newness of this product and it is that, for the moment, there are no decorative varieties such as conventional ones to decorate facades, walls, gardens, etc.
Curiosities
Some researchers try that these bricks, in addition to ecological, have some useful property. An example of them can be seen in the project ” Water Zero: how to get water from the stones “, driven by the Spanish Federation of Technology Centers (FEDIT), the idea of creating bricks whose material is able to absorb moisture has emerged of the environment, so that through a system of channeling on the facades would take advantage of the resulting water for its tenants. Ten FEDIT centers participate in the project, and it has won the first prize (10,000 euros) of this federation.
