Technical, Environmental and Economical Assessment of Sustainable Concrete using Waste Burnt Clay Brick Powder as partial replacement of Cement

Abstract

Introduction

This study evaluates the technical, economic, and environmental feasibility of using Waste Burnt Clay Brick Powder (WBCBP) as a partial replacement for Portland cement in concrete. The main motivation is to reduce cement-related carbon emissions while converting waste bricks from construction and demolition activities into a useful supplementary cementitious/filler material.

WBCBP can improve particle packing and provide nucleation sites at early ages, while its aluminosilicate content may contribute to slower pozzolanic reactions at later ages. However, its performance depends strongly on brick source, firing history, contamination, particle size, fineness, curing, and mix proportioning. Therefore, replacement percentage alone cannot determine its suitability.

Key findings from the literature

• Low replacement levels (around 10–15%) generally show more reliable performance and smaller strength losses.
• Increasing WBCBP content can reduce slump/workability because brick powder is angular, porous, and has a high surface area.
• Compressive strength generally decreases as replacement increases, although some well-processed powders show improved later-age performance.
• Later-age strength development can partially compensate for early-age strength loss because of continuing pozzolanic activity and pore refinement.
• Fineness is critical. Finer powder can improve strength and reduce water absorption, although excessive grinding increases processing energy and cost.
• Durability responses are not uniform. Water absorption, shrinkage, setting time, and transport properties depend strongly on powder characteristics and binder composition.
• Higher replacement levels generally produce greater variability, making quality control more important.

The compiled literature data showed average 28-day strength retention of approximately 85.9% at 10%, 74.3% at 20%, and 45.4% at 30% replacement, while the coefficient of variation increased from 19.4% to 37.1% and 55.7%, respectively. This indicates that higher replacement not only reduces average performance but also increases uncertainty.

Local experimental programme

The study proposes a local validation programme using M25 concrete with four mixes:

• M0: 0% WBCBP
• M10: 10% WBCBP
• M20: 20% WBCBP
• M30: 30% WBCBP

For an illustrative binder content of 350 kg/m³, cement is replaced by 35, 70, and 105 kg/m³ of WBCBP for M10, M20, and M30 respectively. Testing includes slump, 7-day and 28-day compressive strength, and 28-day water absorption, with later-age testing recommended for the most promising mixture.

Economic and environmental findings

Using the assumed base values, increasing WBCBP replacement produces progressively lower binder cost and embodied carbon:

However, these are nominal binder-level savings. Collection, transportation, crushing, grinding, sieving, storage, testing, and additional admixture requirements must also be considered for a real project.

Performance-normalized analysis shows an important trade-off: a mix can be cheaper and lower-carbon per cubic metre but become less economical or less carbon-efficient per unit of delivered strength if its strength decreases substantially.

Conclusion

1) The data acquired proves that WBCBP can be a technically feasible partial cement-replacement material. But its application is not limited to the nominal replacement percentage. The quality of the waste source, the fineness of the processed powder and the way in which the concrete is proportioned and cured are the controlling variables. 2) The range of the replacement with the most reliable performance is around 5-15% in benchmark studies. During this time, several reported systems demonstrated compressive strength approaching control levels and even better performance at later age. 3) Some studies find that the average performance is still workable with 20% replacement but the scatter is much larger. The resulting coefficient of variation increases to 37.1%, which means that local validation is no longer optional, it is essential. 4) Unfavorable balance at 30% replacement in many cases. Large workability and strength penalties become common and the adverse benchmark retained only 17% of the control 28 day strength. Thus, this level is more appropriate as an upper experimental comparison than as a routine structural-concrete recommendation. 5) Workability tends to decrease as the content of WBCBP increases, particularly at replacement levels higher than about 10 to 20 percent. Don\'t lightly increase water to compensate for this effect. If admixture is required the dosage should be controlled, reported and taken into account in the latter economic comparison. 6) Recovery of strength at late age is a common positive characteristic of WBCBP systems. Accordingly, 7- and 28-day strength should be supplemented by one laterage measurement of the selected candidate mix, where practicable. 7) Water-transport behavior is highly dependent on fineness. The literature reports both improvement and deterioration at the same nominal replacement level, suggesting that fineness should be specified and monitored as a process parameter, rather than simply being described post hoc. 8) The quadratic fitted to the compiled 28-day data is useful as a descriptive summary and indicates an accelerating loss with replacement, but has a large spread in its residuals. It’s used to set expectations, not replace local testing. 9) In the base techno-economic scenario, every 10% additional replacement of WBCBP reduces binder cost by approximately 7.5% and embodied carbon by approximately 9.0%. Under these assumptions the substitution is a carbon abatement measure with negative costs. 10) The simple ranking changes if the savings are normalized by the strength achieved. When local performance is only average, none of the replacement levels outperforms the control per unit strength. If the local powder is close to the favorable benchmark, both M10 and M20 are attractive.

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Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Vikas Kataria , Dr Sanjay Sharma. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.