Investigation on usage of waste brick powders obtained from brick factories in Afyonkarahisar region in geopolymer mortar production

There are about twenty brick factories in the Afyonkarahisar region, so that a lot of waste brick pieces and dust are produced in these factories as a result of faulty production or due to fragmentation during transportation. In this thesis, brick powders obtained by recycling waste bricks belonging to fired clay bricks produced in the Afyonkarahisar region are used. Five different brick factories were determined according to their production technologies. Fly ash was chosen as the other raw material to be used as a substitute for waste brick dust. Silica sand was used as aggregate in mortar production. NaOH and Na2SiO3 were used as alkali activators. Physical and mechanical properties of geopolymer mortars produced in different waste brick powders (T1, T2, T3, HT1 and HT2) and different molarities (5 and 10M) were determined. All produced samples were heated in an oven at 80oC for 5 hours. After the oven cure, the samples were kept in the laboratory environment for 28 days. Unit weight, apparent density, apparent porosity, water absorption, ultrasonic pulse velocity, compressive strength and high temperature tests were performed on the cylindrical specimens. According to the results obtained from the produced cylindrical samples, some geopolymer mortar series were selected, plate and disk-shaped samples were produced, flexural strength, electrical resistivity and surface temperature tests were carried out on these samples. According to the obtained data, it was concluded that geopolymer mortars can be produced with waste brick dust.