RE: Reinventing the clay building brick
A guy from my home town (Fulton, N.Y.) invented this stuff 50 years ago. ESTACRON is a patented cementitious construction material composed of portland cement, sand, stack dust (cement kiln dust), fly ash, polyethylene strips, and water. Compared with conventional concrete, the combination of stack dust and fly ash may be viewed as a replacement for aggregate. However, because of their cementitious quality, they could also be regarded as a part of the binder along with cement. In addition, polyethylene strips serve as a reinforcement of the material. This testing and evaluation program was undertaken to assess the strength and thermal properties of ESTACRON. The characteristics of the constituent materials used in ESTACRON were determined and identified. Well over 400 tests were performed, involving 51 different mix designs. In order to evaluate ESTACRON as a structural material, eight reinforced ESTACRON beams and slabs were tested as a pilot study. Thermal conductivity for two different ESTACRON mixes was determined and compared with that of the conventional normal weight concrete.