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Currently, construction industry is unsustainable in nature due to the over dependency on the energy consumptive materials. Thus, to transform the industry from unsustainable to sustainable focus is on innovative materials developed from locally available waste. In this research, focus is on development of alkali activated binder using combination of fly ash (FA), rice husk ash (RHA) and bottom ash (BA) as an alumina silicate source material. Further, thermal performance of the developed material has been studied to understand its impact on the heat transfer and insulation characteristic s of the material. The alkali activated binder developed from bottom ash shows better performance than rice husk ash (RHA) based binder. However, the thermal performance of the rice husk ash binder is more suited for the insulation due to its low thermal characteristics. The lowest thermal conductivity for the developed binder was having value of 0.31 W/m2K for rice husk ash (RHA) based binder.

The research focuses on the investigation of newly developed foamed geopolymer prepared from copper slag industry by-product as an alumina-silicate source material. The product acts as a sustainable alternative to conventional materials having features like waste incorporation, light weight, and low heat transfer rate. The developed material was subjected to the conjugate heat transfer analysis and material was adopted to understand the flow of heat from various levels of the wall system. It was observed that the fluid temperature for foamed geopolymer layer remains below 300 (K) whereas for the conventional layer (i.e. red clay blocks) it attains 302 (K). This proves the thermally efficiency of foamed copper slag incorporated geopolymer layer, which reduces the heat propagation from outside of the building to the indoor, thus enhancing the comfort condition of occupants.

The Indian construction industry is one of the largest in terms of volume of non-renewable resource consumption. In Sustainable buildings (i.e. for example construction materials like bricks, cement, iron) are designed based on efficient use of available natural resources, balancing environmental, economic and societal impacts to meet today’s design objective while considering future impacts. The energy consumption is required for the production of building materials or products. In the aspect of environmental sustainability, the embodied energy analysis is used as a construction design assessment tool. The process-based analysis study was found to be more suitable for the embodied energy evaluation of building materials, especially for the Indian construction industry. A case study was conducted to evaluate the energy consumption of brick industry in West Godavari region. From the life cycle assessment analysis, the total embodied energy of clay-fired brick was ranging between 4.9 GJ/m3 to 7.8 GJ/m3, and the total embodied energy of fly ash blocks and AAC blocks in rang between 2.4 GJ/m3 to 4.5 GJ/m3. Thus, comparing the embodied energy of fly ash, AAC blocks, and conventional bricks, it can be concluded that fly ash and AAC blocks overall provide a sustainable alternative.

Increasing concern over environmental issues has put onus on the construction industry to develop products and materials that are more sustainable and environmentally friendly. This paper focuses on the utilization of oil palm fibers (OPF) and glass powder (GP) to develop thermally efficient building material as a sustainable alternative. OPF are abundantly available in Malaysia as waste in palm oil manufacturing and are found to be useful in enhancing the thermal performance of building material , while waste glass, which contributes to municipal solid waste generation, can be beneficially utilized as a supplementary cementitious material as it possesses pozzolanic behavior. OPF-reinforced blocks were successfully developed with targeted thermal, mechanical and microstructural properties as a sustainable alternative for application in the hot–humid weather conditions in Malaysia. This paper reports on the development of the glass powder–fiber-reinforced mortar (GPFRM) as a final phase of the research in the development of a sustainable thermally efficient wall system. The GPFRM mix was prepared utilizing fibers in ratios of 0.5%, 1% and 1.5% by weight of the binder, whereas GP was incorporated by replacement of 10% and 20% of cement. The developed GPFRM besides having good thermal performance has acceptable mechanical performance, hence proving to be a sustainable alternative to conventional mortar to be incorporated within masonry wall systems.

Thermal performance of building envelope has been of great importance in determining the indoor thermal environment mainly due to the impact of existing global warming issues. Thus there is a need to provide wall system with better thermal performance than conventional wall systems. The focus of the research is to tackle the twin issues of sustainability and thermal performance of building wall systems for low-cost housing. Fiber reinforced mortar (FRM), and thermally enhanced sustainable hybrid (TESH) bricks were developed by optimizing the mix design using Glass Powder, Palm Oil Fly Ash, and Oil Palm Fibers. Both the FRM and TESH bricks, which constitute the TESH wall system, were analyzed for physical, mechanical and thermal performance and they comply with the various codes of practice for building materials. Heat transfer simulation was performed to determine the thermal performance of the newly developed TESH. The temperature distribution and rate of heat transfer through the wall system was found to be significantly lower than conventional wall systems. Also, the energy consumption analysis suggested 10.6% energy reduction for TESH wall system over conventional wall system. The total energy costing for the building was also reduced by 10.2% for TESH wall system.

Sustainability and energy efficiency of building are two of the many challenges that the modern-day construction industry is struggling to overcome. While, energy efficiency of a building may be achieved by reducing the overall energy usage to maintain comfortable dwelling condition, sustainability may be achieved by reusing a portion of large waste generated by industries and other sources. Therefore, an experimental investigation was carried out to develop a novel material, which improves the energy efficiency of the building and at the same time is sustainable in nature. The proposed material is obtained by foaming alkali activated blend of glass powder and fly ash. The alkali activated material is foamed to different degree to obtain a material with target density varying from 1500 to 1000 kg/m3 . The thermal and energy efficiency of the material was analyzed using hot disk and eQuest simulation tool, respectively. Furthermore, detailed thermal analysis is performed using an incompressible conjugate heat flow solver developed in an open-source platform in OpenFOAM. Numerically obtained few pertinent quantities were observed for all the cases such as temperature iso-surface variation through the solid-fluid zone, average temperature of internal room/fluid zone, Nusselt number at solid-fluid interface and temperature profile along the centerline in x -direction. The compressive strength test along with energy demand and cost analysis were also conducted on the foamed materials. The results show a saving of 8.94% and 10.47% in energy demand and usage during the operational stage of the building and the average temperature range in the fluid domain is observed significantly lower than 299 K compared to all other cases. All this can be achieved by adopting glass powder incorporated foamed geopolymer (FGP) blocks having satisfactory compressive strength of 11.3 MPa. Thus, the developed FGP blocks has social, technical and economic benefits over the conventional product.

The focus of the researchers has now shifted towards the geopolymer based materials as it considered as sustainable alternative to the existing cementitious materials. This paper attempts to incorporate the binary blend of pozzolanic material to develop geopolymer composite and understand it’s mechanical and water transport performance as a building material. The combination of bottom ash and rice husk ash with fly ash as a common binder was used for development of geopolymer composite. Replacement levels of both bottom ash and rice husk ash was kept at 40%, 30% and 20% of total solid proportions. Also, the molarity of NaOH was provided at 12 M and 14 M levels respectively. The results showed that the blend of FA-BA blend to be better performed against the blend of FA-RHA blend for their mechanical and water transport properties. The compressive strength of the geopolymer composite having blend of fly ash and bottom ash reached to the value of 41.49 MPa due to its suitable Si/Al ratio for geopolymerization reaction, which is quite remarkable. Also, the results of water transport performance shows the blend of FA-BA to be 15-20% more resistant to percolation of water as compared to FA-RHA blended geopolymer composite, thus lowering the risk of damages to the structures.

Currently there are several kinds of building wall thermal insulation materials commercially available in Malaysia, however the issue with all these materials is that they are not eco-friendly. This paper attempts to reduce the dependence on non-eco-friendly insulation material by developing thermally efficient eco-friendly bricks. The prototype brick developed by incorporating locally available sustainable waste material was subjected to initial investigation on physical, mechanical, thermal and microscopic studies. The investigations revealed that the thermally efficient prototype mix design using glass powder and palm oil fly ash along with lime as binder is able to provide strength to the bricks. Also, usage of oil palm fibres were beneficial in lowering the thermal conductivity of bricks. At incorporation of 1% wt of OPF, compressive strength was found out to be 7.21 MPa and thermal conductivity was 0.39 W/mK, which indicates the proposed bricks can be an alternative to non-eco-friendly commercial common bricks. The advantage of the proposed bricks is two-fold: having low thermal conductivity will make it an energy efficient option, second is the usage of sustainable resources makes it an eco-friendly product.

This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the recycling potential of oil palm industrial waste which is abundantly available in Malaysia that is posing serious environmental concerns. Much research has been undertaken regarding the processing of palm oil production waste, however there is lack of attention regarding the thermal performance of oil palm waste and its attended mechanical properties as fiber reinforced mortar, stifling its wide applicability within the construction industry. This paper focuses on the utilization of oil palm residue to develop thermally insulated building envelope material. The palm oil fly ash is used as a replacement for cement, and the oil palm fibers are incorporated as an additive to reduce thermal conductivity of wall systems. Various proportions of fiber reinforced mortar were prepared to study the effects of fibers on thermal and mechanical performance. Thermal performance was studied using steady state approach by using Hot Guarded Plate apparatus. The experimental findings have revealed that the porous nature of fiber makes it a suitable choice for enhancing thermal performance of mortar, with some acceptable reduction of mechanical strength and marginal fluctuations in flexural strength.

Production of geopolymer based materials has gained popularity over the past decades, several researchers have tried various alumina-silicate (AS) source materials. The issue with geopolymer is it does not have any standard criteria on which mix design can be developed due to the ever-changing chemical composition of its AS source materials. This research focuses on the identification and investigation of various design variables and their influence on the performance of Copper slag incorporated geopolymer mortar (CSGM) developed by using industrial copper byproduct. In this research, three crucial factors i.e., sodium silicate to sodium hydroxide (SS/SH ratio), the molarity of sodium hydroxide (NaOH), and curing temperature were identified as design variables. The mix proportions were developed using identified design variables adopting the Taguchi’s method of L16 orthogonal array. Also, the effect of identified design variables on the flow value and setting time of CSGM was analyzed. The optimal level of factors was found to be (SS/SH = 2.4), (Molarity of NaOH = 14 M) and (curing Temp. = 60 ° C ) from the analysis. Further, the optimal composition of CSGM, which was validated by comparing it to fly ash (class F) based geopolymer mortar (FAGM). The comparative results showed better performance of CSGM as compared to FAGM.

The development of thermally efficient blocks as wall material to provide a reduction in the heating/cooling load of a building envelope has been investigated by a host of researchers. This...

The purpose of paper is to analyse the effectiveness of various roof systems based on insulations layers in hot climatic condition of Hyderabad, India. In this paper, Energy analysis using Autodesk’s Green Building Studio cloud computing software has been done. The Energy analysis results gives indication about the Energy usage of building as well as overall life cycle costing. The roof system has been studied with their carbon emission and Embodied Energy to understand the sustainability aspect of the insulating layers in combination to provide a green roof system. The materials used for studying the insulating effects of roof system which were analysed in combinations were cork, gypsum board, expanded polystyrene, rock wool, fibre glass, PVC mesh, Polyurethane, etc. Due to the insulating layers the heat transfer is reduced through the roof system, which affects the cooling load of building envelope which reduces the energy consumption. The study is significant to understand the occupant’s indoor comfort, environmental and long-term economic benefits of insulation for a building envelope.

The thermal design of affordable housing in Malaysia could be ineffective and resulting from this, the majority of their occupants are not satisfied with the thermal comfort levels provided. To overcome this issue of thermal performance of building envelope, the development of sustainable blocks has been done. The blocks have been developed using locally available sustainable waste materials. The materials utilized were mainly procured from agro-industrial waste (oil palm industry) and municipal waste (waste glass). The aim of the research was to provide a better performing material for low cost houses replacing the conventional red clay bricks. In this research, the physical, mechanical and thermal performance of the sustainable building blocks were examined and compared with existing conventional building blocks. The experimental findings revealed that the newly developed Sustainable blocks have better thermal performance as compared to conventional burnt clay bricks. However, the physico-mechanical performance complies with various standard practices thus proving to be a sustainable wall material.

Objective: In view of the environmental regulations, practitioners have been inclined to use bricks with higher insulation capability, however with minimal attention to sustainable material composition, let alone waste material. From a research perspective, in the wake of the growing concerns for the environment, the use of waste material to develop bricks which can exhibit suitable characteristics attributed to the material composition has been on the rise. However, the extant literature on utilization of waste materials for brick mix design has neglected to provide detailed literature review on the influence of waste materials on the thermal performance of bricks. Methods: This paper provides detailed review of research conducted on thermal properties of bricks produced from various types of waste. Influence of the method of manufacturing and type of waste on thermal performance of bricks is discussed. A sustainability selection criteria format is provided to assist optimal decision making in considering alternative sustainable waste material. Findings: A sustainability selection criteria format is provided to assist optimal decision making in considering alternative sustainable waste material. Applications: The outcome of this paper can serve as a common reference for practitioners and researchers attempting to seek out solutions for further improving overall quality of thermally insulated waste-incorporated bricks, paving the way for more focused research on waste utilization in the development of more sustainable wall material based on the current brick production process.