Students are developing coal-derived building materials and char bricks for a demonstration house currently being constructed as part of the Center for Carbon Capture and Conversion (CCCC).
The CCCC focuses on creating alternative, non-energy uses for coal and developing marketable coal-derived products in order to help Wyoming coal continue to be useful.
“Today, we are focusing only on the Pyrolysis Char Brick and exploring the following: how it can be used to construct two demonstration buildings; to evaluate its cradle-to-grave lifecycle assessment, and to investigate the techno-economic analysis of the manufacturing cost of PCB,” Civil and Architectural Engineering and Construction Management graduate student ChooiKim Lau said.
“Our team will evaluate performance characteristics, such as the mechanical integrity, thermal resistance, light weight, fire resistance, toxicity and electromagnetic radiation tolerance, with comparative durability, noise resistance, moisture absorption, and weathering.”
Lau said, the bricks are lighter weight and stronger than typical bricks and that the demonstration house is the first char brick house of its kind in the world. The char brick design is in the process of being patented
“Through technological innovation of Wyoming coal, it is possible to attract new investments,” Lau said. “For this, we can study the sustainable environmentally friendly methods of Wyoming coal, create new diversified local industries of Wyoming coal, and characterize the efficiency of the char products including lifecycle metrics.
The project first began in 2018 and is ongoing. More than 5,000 bricks have been created so far.
In the summer of 2021, the team began manufacturing the char bricks, a process junior construction management major Noah Scott said was challenging and involved a lot of work to create the right formula for the brick material.
During the process, the team hand made all of the bricks and sprayed them with water every day during the curing process to make sure they didn’t dry out.
“It’s research, so you’re allowed to make mistakes,” Scott said. “The coolest part was watching the building get put up.”
In addition to manufacturing the char bricks, Scott and the other project members designed the house, did cost estimate calculations for the price of the char bricks, and ordered building materials.
The team will collect data on the demonstration house in order to analyze the life cycle of the building materials in different environmental conditions compared to conventional building materials.
As the project continues, the team will continue making improvements to the material and design of the bricks.
