Utilization of Palm Oil Fuel Ash and Rice Husks in Unfired Bricks for Sustainable Construction Materials Development

The production of sustainable construction component could prevent and control the pollution and environmental degradation in Malaysia. This is a key area in Malaysia’s Green Strategies (Ministry of Science, Technology and the environment, 2002). This paper reports on the laboratory investigation to establish the potential of utilizing Palm Oil Fuel Ash (POFA) and Rice Husk (RH) in developing green construction components. Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) reported that currently Malaysia’s contribution to world palm oil production is 39% and has taken 44% of world exports. Consequently it will increase the POFA production in palm oil manufacturing and this waste sometimes dispose in open area near the factory. On the other hand Malaysia also producing more 300k hectares of paddy production, thus rice husk is also a concern as an agricultural waste. The research objective is to study on the potential of utilizing of agricultural waste in developing of green bricks. This research involved laboratory investigations. In this research 2% - 10% of POFA and 1% - 5% RH were used in the mix composition of the brick’s weight. Addition of POFA was aimed to reduce the cement usage and RH was added to reduce sand in the bricks. The bricks were manually pressed in Materials Laboratory in Faculty of Architecture, Planning and Surveying, UiTM Shah Alam. The result showed that the addition of POFA and RH are able to reduce the density but in contrast the compressive strength were decrease compare to the control unit