Producing marketable construction products using industrial solid-waste materials generated from energy-related processes

The demand for energy has been increasing, and petroleum and coal will remain the two major energy sources around the globe. In addition, alternative sources for crude-oil-based liquid fuels, such as biofuels, are also gaining significant visibility. However, during these energy generation processes, solid wastes are produced. Only a small percentage of these by-products are reused; the majority of these materials have been disposed of in landfills, which is posing potential environmental risks and economic burdens. Developing value-added applications to reduce/reuse these wastes would not only help to relieve or reduce the potential environmental risks and the economic burdens, but also help in developing worldwide sustainability. The goal of this thesis research was to study solid wastes generated from four energy-related processes as sustainable materials for making fired bricks and a possible simple tool for screening new solid waste materials for testing fired bricks. The solid wastes included in this study were bottom ash from conventional coal combustion, slag from integrated gasification combined cycle processes, spent equilibrium catalyst from fluid catalytic cracking processes, and saturated filter cake from biodiesel filtration processes. The fired bricks produced were either mold-pressed in the laboratory or extruded at a commercial facility. The successfully formulated bricks showed engineering properties close to or better than regular fired bricks produced with clay and shale, but with no solid waste addition. Based on American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) specification for commercial building brick, the fired bricks produced with these solid wastes blended with clay and shale had marketable quality. The results of this study also provides the brick industry with readily available new raw materials for brick-making and the energy-processing industry with possible cost-saving advantages by reducing or eliminating their solid waste disposal and saving valuable land required for solid waste disposal