Use Of Wastes From The Peanut Industry In The Manufacture Of Building Materials

NANCY QUARANTA; MARTA G. CALIGARIS; , GISELA PELOZO; ANDREA CESARI; ADRIÁN CRISTÓBAL

International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning

WITpress

Año: 2018 vol. 13 p. 662 - 670

1743-7601

Most of the national peanut production, estimated at 900,000 tons per year, is processed in several citiesin the central area of Argentina. The third part of this amount corresponds to the shells, which areseparated in the peanut selection and processing plants. In this work, the possibility of using peanutshells as raw material for the manufacture of ceramic materials for the civil construction industry isstudied. There are precedents on the use of biomass residues in different building blocks, mainly withthe aim of generating lightweight ceramics. With this objective, ceramic pieces were obtained fromgreen bodies manufactured with mixtures of commercial clay and different percentages of ground anddry residue. After a drying period, the samples were heat treated following curves similar to those usedin the ceramic industry. The raw material used, clay and peanut shells, were characterized with differenttechniques, such as XRD, SEM and DTA-TGA. The DTA-TGA analysis shows that the organicmaterial added is burned in a wide temperature range, between 300 °C and 550 °C. Thus, the sinteringprocess of the bricks is performed without cracking or shattering. This test also shows that after the heattreatment, the waste material eventually incorporated into bricks (ashes) is less than 3%. The obtainedproducts have good physical and mechanical properties, with acceptable values of porosity, modulus ofrupture, permanent volumetric variation and weight loss on ignition.Keywords: construction materials, peanut shells, waste