Utilization of plastic and glass waste mixed with sand as an alternative brick materials

Abstract

Nowadays, the research for innovative approaches to and practices for plastic waste in a circular economy has acquired a big attention. Plastic waste causes a serious environmental pollution concern. Meantime, the cement industry is one of the biggest sources of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide emissions, which is considered as another environmental challenge to change of climate. All those and others side effects of plastic waste, make the plastic sand glass bricks an attractive alternative material to construction. In this paper, the plastic and glass waste were used at different percentage for replacing cement as a binder to produce non-traditional concretes. The literature review reveals that there is a deficiency of studies that manage the plastic sand glass as a construction material from economic perspective. Plastic sand glass bricks prepared could be a workable solution for combating issues related to solid waste. The results showed that the compressive strength decreased with increasing ratios of plastic to sand. On another hand, it is increased with increasing of sand ratio. Plastic brick prepared poses a density less than the conventional bricks, and acceptable hardness. Low water absorption also reflected that the plastic brick could be used in the construction. TGA and DSC analysis showed that the plastic brick prepared has a good thermal stability and the decomposition is in the limited and acceptable range. Optimization of the two effective variables (plastic/sand and galas ratios) has been made and correlating the results obtained using Box-Wilson statistical method to create a model for describing the predictable properties of a new product.