Self-healing coal fly ash construction brick for CO2 and dust adsorption

Abstract

As a common byproduct of thermal power plants, coal fly ash (CFA) is often dumped in landfills, where it can cause environmental damage. As a result, in this work, porous construction bricks were made utilizing a byproduct of a thermal power plant, coal fly ash, and baking yeast to absorb carbon dioxide and dust. Yeast was utilized for pore formation, CFA detoxifying, and crack repair. The physical properties of prepared porous bricks are characterized using. X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), confocal microscopy (CM), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) According to the XRD analysis, the brick is made up of quartz, hematite, and mullite. The Porous Brick absorbed 36% of water and 2.5% of dust. The porous fly ash brick has demonstrated superior strength (17.5MPa) and load bearing capacity as compared to traditional bricks in compressive testing. For analysis of the fly ash bricks' ability to absorb carbon dioxide, a gas chromatograph equipped with a Flame Ionization Detector (FID) was utilized. A high adsorption capability of 94.69 percent of CO2 was found for the produced geopolymer bricks. The yeast involvement promote and facilitates the self healing ability of the coal flay ash brick (CFB).