Making PPE waste into bricks without cement is now possible

24 Apr 2023 CW Team

A group of engineering students has developed a process to transform hospital Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) waste, which usually clogs landfills, into bricks that are more durable and require no cement. These poly bricks not only weigh a lot less and can be made in a lot less time than regular red bricks, but they also have a three-fold better compressive strength. The bricks are made faster and are cheaper than ordinary red or concrete hollow bricks and meet the requirements for water absorption because the curing period to reach ISO standards is less than 24 hours.

The team of civil engineering students from Sona College of Technology, Salem won the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) Smart India Hackathon held in Jaipur by presenting a working model for producing poly bricks. They also received a Rs 100,000 prize. PPE kits are sterilised with ultraviolet (UV) rays before being heated to 160 degrees celsius, adding sand aggregates, and then casting the polypropylene mass into bricks. A patent application has been submitted for this method, according to Dr N Karuppasamy, the team's mentor and assistant professor of civil engineering at Sona College of method.

The poly bricks are environmentally beneficial because they don't require any cement or water during the construction process, and because the PPE plastic waste is only heated to a temperature of around 200 degrees Celsius. The construction of poly bricks has the added advantage of completely eliminating the cement that is generally used in the production of hollow concrete bricks. The carbon emissions produced during cement manufacture are eliminated when cement is not used.

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