Preparation and Analysis of Cement Bricks Based on Rice Straw

In Egypt, rice straw is burnt as an easy and the cheap method to get rid of it leads to making a giant black cloud covers Cairo and southern delta governorates. Main purpose of this research is to produce green brick of cement and in-expensive agriculture waste (rice straw) with law price and good characteristics of thermal insulation and acoustic resistance. Different samples of cement brick based on rice straw of many percentages were prepared. First, select best mixture of concrete brick before adding rice straw after preparing and leave for curing time. Then, rice straw is added with various percentage based on total mass of dry mixture to selected concert brick mixture. The selection of best mixture of green bricks criteria is first depending on achieving minimum compression strength according to Egyptian specification then maximizing the percentage of rice straw added. The two mixtures of cement bricks that have maximum compression strength are 1:2:2 and 1:4:5 of 6.2 and 3.1 MPa. The highest percentage of rice straw can be added to later cement mixture is 3% additional quantities based on total mass of mixture dry base of 2.9 MPa. The impact of 3% addition of rice straw on cement bricks enhances thermal by 21.05% by comparing with cement brick of ratio 1:2:2. It decreases sound pressure level inside room from 62 dB to 45 dB. Although, cement bricks reduce sound pressure level to 55 dB. Thousands of cement bricks with 3% rice straw cost are less 8.3% the cost of thousands of cement brick with market ratio 1:4:5. Cement brick of ratio 1:4:5 that used by OPAKI company in Egypt for cement brick manufacturing is used with adding 3% of rice straw. Whatever, it gives very low resistance against compression lower than Egyptian specifications. This mixture of 3% rice straw base is enhanced by nano-silicon addition percentage of sand portion of 2.1 MPa compression test, although cost of thousand bricks is almost equal to the cost of thousands of commercial market bricks. Eventually, life cycle assessment of rice straw is better than normal cement brick mixture materials that helps in reducing greenhouse emissions and energy consumed