RICE HUSK ASH

Hello everyone,
This is Syed Sharfuddin and I'm back with my next blog. Today let me fill your brains with some knowledge of Rice husk ash which can be used as an alternative building material.

Rice husk ash is obtained by burning rice husk in a controlled manner without causing environmental pollution. When properly burnt, it has high SiO2 content and can be used as a concrete admixtures. Rice husk ash exhibits high pozzolanic characteristics and contributes to high strength and high impermeability of concrete.

Dark ballistic aggregates mixed with rice husk ash(RHA)

Rice husk ash (RHA) essentially consists of amorphous silica (90% SiO2) , 5% carbon ,2% K2O. The specific surface area of RHA is between 40-100m²/g.

INDIA produces about 122 million ton of paddy every year. Each ton of paddy produces about 40kg of RHA. There is a good potential to make use of RHA as a valuable Pozzolanic material to give almost the same properties as that of microsilica.

      USE OF RHA IN CONCRETE BLOCKS 
There is a great demand for environmentally safe reuse of rice husk ash thanks to high rate of its generation in India. This is also need of time to develop alternate methods of brick manufacturing in order to reduce the use of fertile soil in brick manufacturing, thus,protecting it for agricultural use. Concrete blocks containing rice husk ash should be promoted as a new construction material to replace the existing blocks in market.

Block prepared from rice husk ash

In USA highly pozzolanic rice husk ash is patented under trade name Agrosilica and is marketed. Agrosilica exhibit super pozzolanic property when used in small quantity .i.e. 10% by weight of cement and it greatly enhances the workability and impermeability of concrete.
It is a material of future as concrete admixtures.

Thanks for reading :)

Camp Fire!!!

https://youtu.be/svEjIIwn60Q

A NEW LOOK OF KRS DAM

KRS REALITY CHECK – 1
Taking advantage of the rapidly depleting water level at the Krishna Raja Sagar (KRS) Dam, the State Government has launched a series of works to repair and rejuvenate the structure. Works are on to strengthen the walls, plugging leaks and cementing cracks.

Engineers inspecting progress in works

The works are being taken up by the Water Resources Department and Cauvery Neeravari Nigam (CNN) Limited under the project “Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project” funded by the World Bank. The total cost of the project is estimated to be Rs. 38.70 crore.

A detailed inspection of the 100-year-old dam has been done and holes on the structure have been identified through “Poly Ironite Ceramic Cementitious Pointing” and they will be filled using Crystalline Technology through Fibre Short Crate. The process will be videographed for precision and the holes will be sealed through grating process. According to officials, the sealing of holes will strengthen the dam which has not seen repairs since decades.

Completed work on inner portion of KRS Dam

Added to this, workers are scaling the dam structure with carriages suspended from the top to check cracks. They are drilling the structure every four metres to test for cracks and leakages. The structure is being scanned through high-powered video cameras and engineers are monitoring the works through the videos.

In the second stage of the project, the 136 floodgates of the reservoir will be replaced at an estimated cost of Rs. 38 crore and the project is in tender stage. Later, the instrumentation works of the dam will be taken up at a cost of Rs. 1.5 crore. “A proposal for other works including rejoining wall and electrification has been sent to the Government and the total estimate is Rs. 30 crore,” officials said.