Development of Hybrid Composite Rice Husk Ash Geopolymer

for Bricks Bearing Buildings

ANDI Ikhsan Maulana1,a, NURUL Kusuma Wardani1,b, SYAMSIDAR D1,c,
ARIANI1,d , NURFADILLA1,e and SUBAER1,f
1

Material Physics Laboratory, FMIPA, Makassar State University, Makassar 90223, Indonesia
a

andi.ikhsan.maulana@gmail.com, bnurulkusumaa@yahoo.co.id, csidarsyams@gmail.com,

d
arianisampara@gmail.com, edillaphysics10@gmail.com, fjzubayir@yahoo.com

Keywords: hybrid, fly ash, rice husk ash, bricks, bearing

Abstract. This study about geopolymer pasta synthesis as materials for brick-based fly ash and rice
husk ash. Washed rice husk ash was heated at 100C for 4 hours to reduce impurities. Synthesis
pasta geopolymer synthesized by alkali activation using NaOH, sodium silicate and distilled water
with stirring manually. Rice husk ash is added to the geopolymer paste of 5%, 10% and 15% of the
composition of the fly ash. The method used is mixing rice husk ash with fly ash before it is mixed
with lye. Then it was cured at a temperature of 60C for 1 hour. After it was aged 7 days prior to the
tests of microstructure, mechanical, corrosion and thermal.
Introduction
Development of technology in infrastructure has been supported the humans live for providing
their needs. There are many buildings using many of raw materials. Basically, those materials that
used to make a building are bricks and Portland cement. Bricks that used for building have low
mechanical properties, then it still need raw materials for making bricks that have better mechanical
properties. Otherwise, the use of Portland cement will produce CO2 emission in large number, and
has a bigger contributed for greenhouse effect [1-3]. Based on those, to minimalize the effect that
was obtained by Portland cement, many research has been done for solving this environments
problems, especially for development of environmentally friendly materials. One promising
environmentally friendly material that provided easier and able to use as innovation for making bricks
is geopolymer [2].
Geopolymer was introduced first by Davidovits in 1978 as an aluminosilicate material [2].
Geopolymer has the advantages that a good capacity of fire resistant [4], acid attacks [2,4], and
compressive strength similar to Portland cement [5]. Based on the potential of geopolymer, it is great
to be used as building materials [4]. One of geopolymer is Fly Ash (FA), that able to use as precursor
for making bricks. FA is the material from coal combustion that floated in the air. While burning the
waste material fell onto the ground is called bottom ash. Fly Ash most produced by some industries
is Class C Fly Ash. FA can be used as source material in the production of geopolymer cause is an
industrial waste that contains high levels of amorphous silica and alumina [3]. One of the physical
properties of the fly ash that can reduce CO2 emissions [1,6] so it is suitable to replace the using of
Portland cement in to build building.
Another material that can be used to produce material of geopolymer is Rice Husk Ash (RHA).
RHA contains significant quantities of silica and alumina [2,7,8], this material is suitable for
producing geopolymers. FA which the inorganic geopolymer composites with the organic matrix,
RHA, an intimate mixture of inorganic and organic, are named hybrid inorganicorganic
composites [9]. If the RHA mixed with Fly Ash will produce a mixture of base material to produce
bricks that are lighter yet stronger. The use of rice husk ash in brick-making can provide several
advantages such as increased compressive strength [8], reduce material costs [1], reduce
environmental impact of waste materials [1], and reduce carbon dioxide emissions [1,6].
The ways to reduce the use of cement as the main adhesive Bearing Bricks models correspond
to overcome it. Bearing Bricks is a model of the preparation of bricks that can be locked to one
another. This model can reduce the use of cement that binds the bricks contained in the cavity brick.

The advantage gained by this model are 1) to reduce the use of cement, 2) no need to use foundation
building frame.
This study utilizes fly ash-based geopolymer as the raw material forming the matrix of
geopolymer and Rice Husk Ash. This study was carried out to determine the quality and capability of
fly ash based geopolymer as bricks bearing building.
Experimental
This study is a development research that lead to the development of Bricks Bearing Building
using class C Fly Ash (FA) with Rice Husk Ask (RHA) through alkali-activation method. Fly Ash
was produced from burning coal as fuel at high temperature and used as a source of alumina silicate
for geopolymer synthesis [3]. Separation of rice husk ash is done by washed using water and then
heated at 100oC for 4 hours. A mixture of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and distilled water with a
certain concentration was used as an alkaline solution. Samples of geopolymer was synthesized by
mixing the basic ingredients of the fly ash and rice husk ash with variation 5%, 10%, and 15% and
activated manually with an alkaline solution to obtain a homogeneous paste.
Geopolymer paste was poured into the beam-shaped glass mold and then heated in an oven at
60C for 1 hours. After the age of 24 hours, the samples were removed from the mold. The samples
were characterized by XRD to get the best composition for the synthesis of geopolymer. Samples
were kept for 7 days prior to testing and characterization of the microstructure. Characterization of
microstructure characterization using two techniques namely XRD and SEM-EDS. XRD is used to
determine the content of compounds and the content contained in the sample phase and the base
material, while the SEM-EDS to determine the morphological structure and content of the element
in the sample. Mechanical testing is done is test the compressive strength and flexural strength. In
addition to mechanical testing, durability testing performed well against acids and thermal testing.
Result and Discussion
In this study, rice husk ash is used as the raw material because it has a high silica content. Fig. 1
shows the characterization results of XRD of rice husk ash. The characterization results indicate that
rice husk ash contains abundant SiO2 minerals in the form tridymite phase of 94 wt% and cristobalite
phase of 6 wt%, and the other mineral was TiO2 in form rutile phase of 3 wt%,

Figure 1. The diffractogram of risk husk ash

Fig. 2 shows the XRD pattern of fly ash. It shows that fly ash contains quartz, magnesium
dialuminate, mullite, calcium peroxide and magnetite. The XRD pattern also shows that the fly ash
has a poly crystal structure. It means that the materials contains crystalline and amorphous

structures. The dominant phase in the sample are quartz phase which about 32%, and phase of
magnetite which about 29%.

Figure 2. The diffractogram of fly ash

Fig. 3 shows the diffraction pattern of hybrid composite rice husk ash-geopolymer with RHA variant
5%, 10%, and 15%. As we can see that along with the addition of the higher RHA, trydimite and
cristobalite phase also become high, which is the default phase of the RHA. The addition of RHA
also can be seen that there is no phase change and structures that occur with the addition of 15%
RHA. Additionally, diffractogram pattern shows the intensity of quartz diminished with the addition
of RHA increases.

Figure 3. The diffractogram of hybrid composite rice husk ash-geopolymer with RHA variant
5%, 10%, and 15%

Gambar SEM

Figure 4.

Mechanical testing on the study include testing the compressive strength and flexural strength. The
highest compressive strength value obtained on the sample FA-ASP 10% with the addition of 10%
RHA. Table 1 shows that the compressive strength of sample with addition of 15% RHA declined.
Penjelasan uji lentur
Table 1. The density, porosity, compressive strength and flexural strength of sample hybrid
composite rice husk ash-geopolymer
Sample

Density
(g/cm3)

Porosity
(%)

FA-ASP 5%
FA-ASP 10%
FA-ASP 15%

2.08
2.07
2.03

13.70
15.06
1.03

Compressive
Strength
(MPa)
26.00
26.21
25.59

Flexural
Strength
(MPa)

Fire resistance testing is done by giving the fire on the side of the sample and then placing
thermocouples on the same side with a distance about 2 cm from the fire source. Fire sprayed on the
side of the sample until the temperature reaches 1540C for 30 minutes. After the sample is sprayed
flame using a flame troucher, the sample did not have significant damage. The damage occurs only in
the area around the fire source. Fig. 5b shows that the sample was damaged by high temperature and
caused the crack around the surface of the sample. The highest temperature of sample is about
589.2o C remaining testing. The cracks was caused by the RHA containing of geopolymer.

(a)

(b)

Figure 5. (a) Fire resistance testing processing (b) the crack after testing

Temperature is measured using a thermocouple at 2 cm from the fire source. The difference
temperature between fire sources and 2 cm from the source reaching 1038 C. Fig. 6 shows the
graph of the measurement data of fire resistance properties of the material has very high heat
resistance. This shows that the bricks were made has excellent resistance so that the potential to be
used as building materials.

Figure 6. The graph of temperature distribition of fire source and sample.

Testing acid using H2SO4 solution with a concentration of 1M. The samples were stored for 4 days
by measuring the pH every day in H2SO4 solution. After soaking for 4 days, shown on the sample
surface color changed also occurred due to immersion and shown cracks on the surface of the
samples. However, the acid attack only occurred on the surface of a sample of about 1 mm, due to
the inside of samples did not changed, in terms of both color and chemical composition based on the
XRD data.

(a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 6. Samples appreance before and after acid attacked testing with RHA variant
(a) 5%, (b) 10%, dan (c) 15%

Table 2 shows the pH of the sample remains constant until the immersion for 4 days. It shows that
the acid attack only on the physical side in the sample (Fig. 7). Moreover, it also can be seen in Table
2, the value of the density of the samples before and after the test acid attack.
Table 2. The density of sample hybrid composites rice husk ash-geopolymer
before and after acid attack
Sample

Density (g/cm3)
Before Acid
After Acid

FA-ASP 5%
FA-ASP 10%
FA-ASP 15%

Attack
2.08
2.07
2.03

Attack
1.90
1.92
1.90

The density decreases due to the samples become brittle but only in surface side, shows in Fig. 7.

Figure 7. Appreance of weathering sample

Summary
Geopolymer has been successfully synthesized from hybrid rice husk ash-based fly ash through
geopolymerization method at 60 0C activated with NaOH solution. The addition of RHA can increase
the quality of geopolymer that compressive strength and flexural strength, resistance with acid
attack, and resistance with fire in high temperature. Based on this research, sample containing 10%
RHA shows a good properties as bricks bearing building.
Acknowledgements
This work was financially supported by Physics Research Community (Komunitas Peneliti Fisika),
Makassar State University.
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