Study of Municipal Sludge as a Building Material
Abstract
Study Of Municipal Sludge As a Building Material Different industries produce sludge of different quality and in different quantities. Common method adopted for disposing the sludge is land filling. Landfill disposal of the sludge has drawbacks like high cost of transportation, difficulty in getting suitable sites for land filling, heavy metal contamination of the land, emission of foul gases etc. Thus the disposal of sludge has become a major issue.The objective of this study is to identify the possibilities of using the sludge obtained from effluent treatment plant in Hindustan Latex Limited,Trivandrum as a brick material.
Conclusion
Sludge produced in the plant was effectively used in manufacture of bricks and the quantity of waste generated was minimized.Different engineering properties of the sludge such as specific gravity and moisture content were studied. Specific gravity of sludge was obtained as 1.53 while moisture content was observed to be 162%.Different conditions affecting the strength of bricks were studied. It was seen that when percentage of sludge was increased in the mix, water requirement as well as water absorption of the bricks increased. But at the same time, compressive strength of the brick decreased. But on the addition of cement and flyash, the properties of the bricks improved.
