Using Khulais Non- Active Bentonite with Sand Dunes For Red Bricks Production

There exist huge reserves of non-active bentonite at Khulais region in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This ore has not been successfully exploited till the moment. In this paper, the possibility of using this ore as a binder for sand dunes to produce red bricks was studied. Laboratory investigations showed that the optimum brick mixture should contain 25 % of bentonite as a partial replacement of sand dune by weight. Hence, the optimum brick mixture was further investigated for producing red bricks of standard dimensions. The produced standard bricks were fired at different firing curves and tested for their technical specifications. The results showed that it is possible to produce red bricks of standard dimensions using Khulais bentonite with sand dunes with technically accepted specifications where the compressive strength of the produced samples was found to be 224 kg/cm2 compared to 103 kg/cm2 needed for normal red bricks.