Low-carbon Bricks for Sustainable Construction

Recently, scientists at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) developed a technology to produce low-carbon bricks that can serve as energy efficient walling materials.

Background

• Conventionally, building envelopes comprise masonry walls built with burnt clay bricks, concrete blocks, hollow clay blocks, fly ash bricks, lightweight blocks, and so on.
• These envelopes spend energy during their production, thus incurring carbon emission, and consume mined raw material resources which lead to unsustainable constructions.
• The masonry units are manufactured either through the process of firing or using high-energy or embodied carbon binders such as Portland cement.
• In order to promote sustainable construction, two important issues need ....