The lifetime brick is rebuilt with new materials

The brick has more than 11,000 years of history, although the first experiments with cooked clay masses for arches, vaults and domes are attributed to the Romans. Now, companies and universities investigate new more efficient and less polluting mixtures.

An example is The ceramic dove, Spanish company that has developed an ecological brick that allows efficient energy consumption and the maximum performance of the buildings. Part of its secret lies in a format (236 mm long x 100 mm wide x 119 mm high) that decreases 49% the mortar in the face cloth seen and reduces up to 36 units the number of pieces placed per square meter .

Julio Pascual, general director of this firm, explains that the ecological brick limits the CO2 that emits a facade with two ways, the measures and the raw material: «It is as if you put two normal bricks, one on top of the other, to use less mortar In the work. We also elaborate a narrower brick, with less depth. In Spain, the standard is 11.5 centimeters deep. We do it 10 and save raw material. Next to the usual clay and water, we incorporate recycled elements from other industries ». Thus, emissions for each square meter of facade are reduced by up to 31.8%.

Innovation is part of the company’s DNA, says Pascual: «We look for less carbon footprint in our ovens; The simplicity of placement, such as the thermoklinker system, with brick panels, or the Iris system, for ceramic lattices without mortars; and aesthetics, appropriate to architecture and modern tastes ». The environmental commitment is firm. “We manufacture the brick,” says Pascual – only by day, to be able to take advantage of the solar panels. The elaboration with waste gives us the possibility of three colors, the black, the gray and the ivory, while for other products we reach the 30 varieties ».

La Paloma Ceramica, with nine factories in Spain and Portugal and more than 300 employees, counts among its most emblematic projects with the extension of the Prado Museum and the Atocha station in Madrid, the Loyola University campus in Seville or the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

Significant evolution

For Elena Santiago, general secretary of Hisplayt, Spanish Association of Bricks and Cocida clay tiles, “The face -seen brick as construction material has evolved significantly in recent years to respond to the need for more efficient, sustainable constructive solutions adapted to new trends such as industrialized construction.” Among the innovations for facades, Santiago stands out “the thermoklinker, which combines prefabricated panels with integrated thermal insulation and platelet finish seen, and Flexbrick, a modular system based on flexible sheets with ceramic elements.”

The brick properties favor the energy efficiency of the buildings, says Elena Santiago: «Its high thermal inertia allows to reduce the demand for heating in winter and cooling in summer. In addition, it improves the thermal envelope of the building without maintenance, ensuring its durability and performance over time ». Its manufacture is carried out through innovative processes in which the latest technologies (biomass, solar energy, green hydrogen) apply to reduce energy, water and emissions consumption. All these contributions to environmental decarbonization and sustainability are certified by stamps or labels after submitting bricks to different tests and evaluations.

The general secretary of Hisplyt estimates that the future of the brick sector in Spain will be marked by four great trends: «Sustainability and energy efficiency (to respond to the energy rehabilitation needs of the park built and the fight against climate change) ; industrialization, with the rise of prefabricated solutions that will allow to build more quickly and with less environmental impact; Innovation in design and installation; and the digitalization and generalized use of BIM, which will allow better planning and quality control in all phases of the project ».

José Manuel Díaz Sarachaga, Doctor of Civil Engineering and Professor of the Master in Renewable Energies of the International University of Valencia (ViU), He comments that research in Spain runs through roads similar to what happens beyond our borders, “although the product is customized here to adapt it to the characteristics of the country, fundamentally climatic or geographical.”

Avoid clays

The objective of innovation is to avoid or minimize the use of clays, says Díaz: «This implies using recycled materials. And these materials range from plastic to ashes and even straw. The bricks are also intended to increase thermal and acoustic insulation. Another line of research is one that explores minimizing the cost of installation, labor, which is currently increasingly scarce ».

But clay still has life ahead, “unfortunately,” says the engineer, “for high energy consumption.” “The implementation of novel bricks will depend on the knowledge of users,” he said. If someone buys a floor and they tell him that the brick material is flying ashes, plastic or straw, he can shake if he does not know the advantages. A certain education campaign is required in citizenship and preparation in the operators that place it ».

“The most sustainable construction, demonstrated in all possible ways, is prefabricated,” says the expert. «If you calculate the carbon footprint throughout the life cycle, it is much lower than that of traditional construction. What happens? While in other countries almost everything is prefabricated, ignorance in Spain makes it still bet on the brick, ”he adds.

Alejandro San Vicente Navarro obtained the doctorate in mechanical engineering from the University of La Rioja with a thesis that demonstrated the viability of the manufacture of mortar bricks using olive bone crushed. The research ‘Methodology for the evaluation of sustainability in doping bricks with crushed olive bone’ was developed with the direction of Javier Ferreiro Cabello and Esteban Fraile García.

Improvement

The work shows that this material improves the thermal insulation properties of bricks, progress that is achieved without significantly compromising mechanical resistance, as long as the crushed proportion is maintained between 5% and 15%. «We started testing – describes San Vicente, current professor in mechanical engineering at the University of La Rioja – with crushed rubber of pneumatic waste and we already verify an improvement of the thermal conductivity parameters. Then we focus on the crushed olive bone to replace the aggregate in different percentages, but without losing hardness and resistance properties ».

The increase in thermal insulation capacity translates into lower energy consumption for heating and air conditioning in buildings raised with these bricks. “We saw that it was sustainable in all aspects,” he says. The research approach was for brick in a new building. To market the prototype, San Vicente considers that “only a little infrastructure is required not very complex.”