Hasta La Ideas

When you burn coal in coal power plants, one by-product produced in the process is fly ash (Wiki). Most of this fly ash is collected by the power plants smoke cleaning gear, and the gathered ash can either be sold off as a component for the cement industry or, which is more common, be disposed of in landfills. This is a growing problem. According to calculations, hundreds of millions of tonnes of fly ash has to be disposed of in the world yearly. In India alone, fly ash landfills are now reported to cover 160 square kilometers (some 40,000 acres). But there may be a solution in the works. Henry Liu (above), a retired American engineer, has developed a method with which fly ash can be used to make building bricks. The fly ash brick, which is made under high pressure, becomes as strong as concrete, and compared to clay bricks, it has several environmental upsides. It requires no mining, no high temperature firing in kilns, and having fly ash in buildings is a lot better than having it in landfills. Henry Liu is now reported to be working on getting his bricks in production some time during 2008.brbr