GALES Bricks- Bricks made of recycling materials

Climate change has long-since ceased to be a scientific curiosity, and is no longer just one of many environmental and regulatory concerns. As the United Nations Secretary General has said, it is the major, overriding environmental issue of time, and the single greatest challenge facing environmental regulators. 

As world is concerned, recycling of industrial wastes makes the most common sense and applicable solution. Using three of the most neglected wastes "Recycle Paper mill waste (RPMW) , cement dust and coal Mine Wastes Rocks (CMWR) " to establish a system that mixes them together into well-enhanced bricks which are to meet the design requirements of producing an eco-friendliness brick. Actually, it will serve all the building sectors in the world, specially the poor areas. 

Climate Change is no longer some far-off problem; it is happening here, it is happening now."  Barack Obama

Climate change in Egypt, specifically, is public health issue that causes numerous    diseases for humans. According to the opposite graph, an increasingly percentage of CO2 emissions is caused by industrial pollution that reaches 186 Million Metric Tons in 2013. In previous solutions, Many systems are applied like Renewable sources for electricity and CO2 cartridges, however, none of them achieved its fundamental role as being lower cost or durability and led to many commercial and social problems that impaired the economic revenue. As an observation, the residuals from industrial pollution could be assembled to evolve comprehensive product instead of discharging it in the environment, hence, our project relies upon three disregarded materials that are Recycle Paper mill waste (RPmw), cement dust and Coal Mine Wastes Recycling (CMWR) to construct enhanced bricks through some steps. Thus, the project concerns mainly with recycling the wastes that come from three different industries that are recognized as the most three dominant industries in Egypt. Briefly, this project will work mainly in the areas that suffer heavy rains that lead to deficiencies in the building bricks.

Mainly, People in upper Egypt endure many problems regarding the building bricks as these bricks lose their efficiency in the winter due to the heavy rains; thus, we are targeting mainly those areas either in Egypt or in the world. Thus, those are my target segment that the project work on to improve their lives. The system helps homes in the areas that suffer weather problems to become fully independent on the bricks that have more flexible strength, heat tolerance, and eco-friendliness and able to invest in infrastructure for building service to even the poorest residents. 

In respect to results, Egypt has got a chance to beat the challenge of Climate change. Our industrial system is used to yield a new adjusted brick that release no pollutants to the environment.

1-CMWR Treatment

A representative sample of CMWR was collected from the dumps. Due to its high content in carbon (more than 6 wt. %) in the form of coal, CMWR sample underwent a pre-treatment process to recover the remaining coal using a froth flotation process. High coal content may lead to the deterioration of fired bricks properties due to the formation of coarse pores. Once Coal was recovered, a second type of wastes is produced that called TCMT (Treated Coal Mine Wastes). Finally, TCMT is mixed with CMWR, ShB (Shale bricks) and Baco3 then the product dried at temperature (60 C), homogenized to be raw material for GALES brick industry.

2- Mixing

Based on the results obtained in the experimental investigation, the following conclusions are found. The RPmw holds the moisture in brick’s pores and fibrous envelopes providing obstacle for moisture to move towards the surface. As a reason for high cellulosic nature, the brick porosity is directly proportional to RPmw content

All brick samples show excellent compressive strength (10-12 MPa) as compared to conventional brick (5.5 MPa). Because of fibrous nature of the RPMW the brick under compressive load shrunk not break. There is no shrinkage in GALES brick at 10 MPa, however, maximum shrinkage of 20% is reported at 12 MPa.

3- Drying and Curing

Drying is usually done by placing the bricks in sheds with open sides so as to ensure free circulation of air. The bricks are allowed to dry till they are left with 8 to 12 percent moisture content. The drying period usually varies from 7 to 10 days. The moulded bricks are dried because of removing maximum moisture from the brick so as to increase the strength of raw bricks, So that they can be handled and stacked in greater heights after this stage. Thereafter, from the experiments, conclusion has been set that air dried bricks should be water cured for a minimum period of 14 days. Curing is carried out by sprinkling water manually or by any other means.

This is the first time to get bricks from such components. All the previous solutions depend only on one waste; however, we will get use of three different types of wastes that take place in Egypt and emit many pollutants like carbon dioxide. Since we start thinking of this solution, we are aiming the creativity approach. This project will make the solution more efficient and more cheap; therefore, this will lead to an expansion of target segment of the project. GALES Bricks will have a transformational effect on the brick industry and towards the climate change approach.  

Firstly, CMWR require treatment before being used in bricks manufacturing. The Treatment starts with two important processes that are coal crashing and grinding. The next step is floatation to collect the tailings that are known as Treated Coal Mine Tailings (TCMT). The final Stage of this treatment is mixing TCMT with Shale bricks (ShB), water and Baco3 by 55%, 35%, 10% and 0.02% respectively weight. The resultant mixture is CMWR that takes a place in GALES Bricks industry. Finally, RPmw, cement dust, and CMWR are mixed by percentages of 50%, 30% and 20% by respectively using a mixer. The mixture in then put in molds under pressure 6 MPa. Then it is dried under 25 ˚C for 12 hours. After the bricks hold their shapes, they pass through curing stage that takes from 3 days to 5 days.

This solution will lead to a revolutionary change in the bricks industry. Also, it will decrease the rate of carbon dioxide in Egypt by 70 percent as these wastes were supposedly burnt and emit many pollutants that affect negatively the climate in a long run. Furthermore, it will serve the aim of circular economy target as it takes some useless solid wastes and turn them to a product that will serve a large segment of people, it can reach millions if it was implemented globally. In our project, we recycle wastes that

came from paper and cement factories to cement bricks that is better than
normal bricks. Simply, GALES bricks will contributed to solve the problem of bricks deformation in Egypt due to heavy rains. After a comprehensive test plans, the flexural strength of Gales bricks is 12 MPa compared to 5.5 Mpa of Fly ash bricks. Regarding the cost, the 1000 GALES brick cost only 520 Egyptian pounds in comparison of 1250 pounds of the same a mount of Clay bricks. the project will decrease the carbon dioxide emissions by brick industry by 70 percent.

The project is currently at a prototype stage; therefore, the project does not have a significant effect on many people. However, we use this type of bricks in building eight small houses that are composed of one floor. So, we are serving roughly thirty people for a year. These houses were a tool to validate the project. After a year , we can conclude that those houses did not suffer from weather problems like those built of normal bricks. The project is aiming to participate in Solve competition in order to receive more fund and to be able to serve more people. Nevertheless, the project plans to serve like three thousand houses next year in four different countries in Africa after reaching an agreement with the governmental associations in those countries, that will be so soon. In the next five year, the project is hoping to serve one hundred thousand homes in all continents of the world.

We would like to serve millions of people by this project as it will have a huge impact on the bricks industry. This could help many people who are suffering from heavy rain problems to use a more durable bricks that resist such kind of problem. Also, it will help a lot reducing the carbon dioxide emission in the near future and that will aid in solving the problem of global warming. Furthermore, these wastes caused many lung diseases to people that are living nearby their factories so we will take those wastes and exploit them in making a product. The project is mainly aiming to help poor people that suffer from brick problems in their houses; also, it aims to decrease the emission of pollutants and serve decreasing the phenomenon of global warming in a long term. In the next year, we will expand locally in thirty five villages in Egypt by building a three thousand houses. In the next five years, we will start implementing the project in four different countries in Africa that endure the problem of poverty and heavy rain problem, and we will aim to serve three million people. However, if we receive fund from associations or competitions like Solve, I think the project will be implemented in more than thirty countries and serve more than 100 million people.

There are three major barriers that hinder the progress of the project. First of all, as we know that paper industry is no longer durable at Egypt and the country goes for automation idea. Thus, we will face shortage in RPMW in the immediate future. Thus, we are searching for alternatives to the paper wastes that could be exploited in the future. Secondly, we are struggling to some extent concerning the financial status of the project since we do not receive financial support except small grants from some factories. Therefore, we face somehow difficulty in sustaining the project in the future. Finally, getting agreements from the government, either in Egypt or in the other African countries, takes a lot of time because of many tests conducted on the bricks to make sure of its efficiency.

Some improvements are intended to be added in immediate future to innovate and enhance a better solution for the gigantic problems in Egypt like cement dust problem and the discharging of the pollutants of the factories to the environment without using them in something that would benefit us and the insufficiency of the Recycle Paper mill waste. Our research has confirmed that waste from waste generated from granite and Marable industries instead of RPmw can also be used to make bricks due to their validity and strength. Also Granite and Marable industry are not a common thing in Egypt so our recommendation is to make it in a wide range in Egypt so that we could exploit their residuals in brick industry not importing them from other countries that would increase the project price.These wastes are going to increase bricks insulating capacity by up to 40%.

concerning the financial sustainability, we are aiming to get some sponsorships and guidance from factories and competitions. SOLVE will be our first step of guaranteeing a sustainable project for a while.

We are 2 full-time staff working together in this project for 2 years, regardless of the governmental people. 

The team members came from STEM High School. At STEM High School,we believe that the school was designed to create “centers of excellence” that embody trans-disciplinary collaboration, real world applications, critical thinking, and a pioneering spirit. Ultimately, STEM schools support a new vision of Egypt as a country equipped with both the human capital and the institutional resources to compete and excel in the international marketplace. Students work in teams and choose their projects based on the topic provided that responds to the Egyptian Grand Challenge. The Capstones are graded during the “Capstone Exhibition” by a panel of university

professors in the School of Sciences and School of Engineering. 

The Capstone provides an alternative way for dedicated students to fulfill passion by working on research projects. Students are supervised by engineers and other technical professionals throughout their project.
Students get involved in research and/or project development at various agencies, including corporate,university, and government institutions, throughout the metropolitan Greater Cairo area. Therefore, we have worked on this project for two years with support of engineers and technicians.  

We’ve grown word of mouth from customers to customers with zero marketing budget in the duration of 2 years showing that there is a market need for GALES bricks. The cost of customer acquisition in our project has therefore been zero. If the customer request from us to build his home, we charge to be on our factories through 512 pounds per 1000 bricks. Our revenue has grown so far without a sales team and solely driven by inbound requests, and we believe that this can grow this significantly in the next 5 years through outbound sales and with more resources devoted to it and a coherent sales strategy. As we are profit project, 35% of our operating budget was via earned income , our 2019 target is to reach 50, and by 2025 to 75%.

First of all, we will gain the financial sustainability through selling the bricks as a service of building homes to them. After a short period of time, we will apply for grants in order to have first fixed factory of GALES brick in Egypt and the other countries. Concerning the marketing budget, till now, we have zero marketing budget as we gain fame by customers in the villages. Our project will be well positioned to generate profit to sustain our project through the provision of support contracts, implementation and hiring more experts in the fields in the GALES bricks factory.

The GALES Project attains lasting enhancements in the industry of bricks by recycling  cheap solid wastes that are grown rapidly in a country like Egypt within national industrial systems. This project can help many countries to increase their efficiency of bricks production, just by using these wastes. We are applying to Solve because we would greatly get benefits from assistance with our current scale and revenue models, as well as our ability to validate the effect we are achieving.  This partnership would also further our target of being a thought leader in recycling plants for electricity production. A Solve partnership would assist us with the guidance as we establish the components of our project. 

We will would to get a partnership in the fields of monitoring, guidance, and finance fields. We will not have the name in our minds currently; however, we are sure that SOLVE will provide us with many associations that will support us to accelerate the pace of our project. 

The project would like to apply for this prize for many reasons. Firstly, we created a new manufacturing system of recycling some wastes in order to produce brick. Secondly, the team's plan includes how to eliminate the pollutants and reach zero waste and zero carbon. My team will use the prize as a tool to accelerate the pace of the project. We would like to expand the areas where the project will be executed and hire more workers. We can use the prize to seek guidance from experts in the field on how to promote a better business plan and revenue model. Finally, this prize will help overcoming most of the financial barriers in the implementation process.