Fritz Moedinger

Abstract The addition of biomass ashes to a brick feed has been investigated in a full-scale industrial production process over several days. The addition of biomass ashes to the brick feed is part of an ongoing research and development project targeted at substituting or combining quarried raw materials with suitable waste materials. In this chapter some of the early results of the first industrial trial runs with biomass ashes are presented. The main scope of this ongoing research and development project is reduction of production cost, generation of additional revenue from gate fees, and improvement of product characteristics.

9.1 Introduction

Besides other methods of recycling biomass ashes as described in other chapters in this book (see Chap. 1, Knapp and Insam 2011; Chap. 6, Omil et al. 2011; Chap. 11, Ribbing and Bjurstrom 2011), another option is to use the ashes for producing construction materials such as concrete (see Chap. 10, Berra et al. 2011) and brick.

For the production of ceramic bricks, the predominant raw material used is mineral clay. Any good brick clay should have low shrinkage and low swelling characteristics, consistent firing color, and a relatively low firing temperature, but at the same time produce an adequately dry and fire-strength brick. The guiding rule of choice on wastes and by-products must rest on their compatibility with the original (host) raw material being used, whereas they must not degrade the final product by focusing simply on making it a repository for wastes. Thus, it is necessary to

F. Moedinger

University of Staffordshire/Recuperi Industriali S. r.l. Fritz Moedinger, Via Don Bosco 10, 39042

Bressanone, Brixen, Italy

e-mail: fritz. moedinger@gmail. com

H. Insam and B. A. Knapp (eds.), Recycling of Biomass Ashes,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-19354-5_9, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011 establish a company-and-production — site-specific “tailor-made” quality product standard. In general, the firing of a mineral mass rich in aluminum silicate such as brick clay allows permanent stabilization of almost all heavy metals included except chromium (Anderson and Skerratt 2003).