{"id":3644,"date":"2011-05-11T09:04:34","date_gmt":"2011-05-11T16:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unrbep.org\/?p=3644"},"modified":"2011-05-11T09:04:34","modified_gmt":"2011-05-11T16:04:34","slug":"heart-of-glass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/heart-of-glass\/","title":{"rendered":"Heart of Glass"},"content":{"rendered":"

By:\u00a0Jonathan Hiskes; <\/strong><\/a>Sustainable Industries Magazine<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

We may need to ditch that aphorism about throwing stones at\u00a0glass houses.<\/p>\n

Two engineering graduate students at the University of\u00a0Washington have found a way to\u00a0make bricks out of recycled\u00a0glass <\/a>that they say are stronger, lighter and better insulators than\u00a0conventional building blocks.<\/p>\n

Renuka Prabhakar and Grant Marchelli claim their VitroBricks\u00a0require 80 percent less energy to produce because they\u2019re fired at\u00a0a much lower temperature for a shorter time. Most promising of\u00a0all, according to the engineers, their invention can put to work\u00a0the millions of tons of discarded glass that end up in landfills\u00a0each year.<\/p>\n

Sound too good to be true? It\u2019s still an early-stage technology,\u00a0and Prabhakar and Marchelli need to prove they can manufacture\u00a0consistently and cheaply enough to break into the masonry\u00a0industry.<\/p>\n

But the students\u2019 startup, EnVitrum (Latin for \u201cout of glass\u201d),\u00a0has already drawn interest from UW research funders, brick\u00a0makers and architects like Perkins+Will. Waste Management says\u00a0it\u2019ll pay them to take mixed-color waste glass off its hands.<\/p>\n

Prabhakar and Marchelli say they were inspired by the\u00a0surprisingly low level of glass recycling: Only 26 percent of the\u00a0glass waste stream is actually reused, according to the United\u00a0States Environmental Protection Agency.\u00a0 Bottle makers can\u00a0use only 10 percent to 35 percent recycled material and any\u00a0impurity, including mixed colors, can render their products\u00a0useless.<\/p>\n

The grad students first tried using finely crushed glass for 3D\u00a0printing \u2013 essentially stacking thin layers of glass\u2013 but found that\u00a0the results resembled a Jell-O salad more than a brick.\u00a0Then they experimented with sintering, a technique for fusing\u00a0powderized materials. Prabhakar and Marchelli mixed in a\u00a0binding agent they developed (they will say only that it\u2019s not\u00a0toxic or petroleum-based) and created a process for \u00a0heating the bricks at multiple temperatures.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not as simple as making a brick and putting it in the\u00a0oven,\u201d says Prabhakar.<\/p>\n

The resulting product, though, has the heft and gritty texture\u00a0of a clay brick.\u00a0A glass brick can be designed to be highly porous, drawing\u00a0water through capillary action. In hot climates, running water\u00a0through a wall would produce evaporation, cooling a building.<\/p>\n

The glass bricks\u2019 unique porosity may also be useful for so-called\u00a0living walls. The two engineers have developed prototypes with\u00a0special cavities for plants, since many living walls so far have\u00a0relied on felt or plastic containers with limited durability.<\/p>\n

Gregg Borchelt, president of the Brick Industry Association,\u00a0says plenty of would-be inventors try alternative materials for\u00a0brick before running into, well, a brick wall when it comes to\u00a0cost or durability.<\/p>\n

He says cheap waste glass and lower energy costs for firing\u00a0could be advantages for Prabhakar and Marchelli \u2013 if they can\u00a0show their products are reliable and they can obtain a lot of\u00a0glass.<\/p>\n

\u201cA typical plant will turn out 40 million bricks per year, so\u00a0that\u2019s a pretty big pile of material,\u201d\u00a0 notes Borchelt.<\/p>\n

The next hurdles for Prabhakar and Marchelli are verifying\u00a0their bricks can meet international standards for building\u00a0materials and gaining independent verification of their\u00a0manufacturing process.\u00a0They hope to license the technology rather than go into the\u00a0brick-making business themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t really want to be\u00a0masonry manufacturers,\u201d says Prabhakar. \u201cWe\u2019re both engineers\u00a0and that\u2019s what we love to do. We want to develop and scale and\u00a0be problem-solvers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By:\u00a0Jonathan Hiskes; Sustainable Industries Magazine We may need to ditch that aphorism about throwing stones at\u00a0glass houses. Two engineering graduate students at the University of\u00a0Washington have found a way to\u00a0make bricks out of recycled\u00a0glass that they say are stronger, lighter and better insulators than\u00a0conventional building blocks. Renuka Prabhakar and Grant Marchelli claim their VitroBricks\u00a0require 80 … Continue reading Heart of Glass<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3644"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3644"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3646,"href":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3644\/revisions\/3646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}