Leachability of Fired Clay Brick Incorporating with Sludge Waste from Mosaic Industry

Abstract

Abstract. The amount of sludge wastes from industrial, mining, domestic agriculture activities are about 60200 tons per year. The increasing of the waste will have significant impact towards environment and energy conservation. Many attempts have been made to incorporate sludge waste into brick for example fly ash sludge, sewage sludge, water sludge and ceramic sludge and advantages on the properties have been found but heavy metals leachibility will be the main concerned. Therefore, sludge waste is a potential alternative to convert into useful products as a building material that can alleviate the disposal problems. Therefore, in this study the characteristics of heavy metals were determined by using XRF. Four different mixing ratios of mosaic sludge waste at (0o/o, lyo,5oh, and 10%) were incorporated into fired clay brick. Each brick was fired in a heat controlled fumace at elevated temperatures of 1050C. The characteristic of heavy metals from the sludge waste were determined by XRF and the result show that the sludge waste is high in iron (Fe) and Zicronium (Zr) followed by Barium (Br), Chromium (Cr), Cadmium (Cd), Copper (Cu) andZinc (Zn). The leachability of heavy metals from the manufactured mosaic sludge brick were determined by using toxicity characteristic leachibility procedure (TCLP) and the results demonstrated that the culprit heavy metals were all complied to USEPA(1996) and EPAV(2005a).