Insulating bricks with microscopic bubbles

The better a building is insulated, the less heat is lost in winter—and the less energy is needed to achieve a comfortable room temperature. The Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) regularly raises the requirements for ...

Bricks made with wool

Spanish and Scottish researchers have added wool fibres to the clay material used to make bricks and combined these with an alginate, a natural polymer extracted from seaweed. The result is bricks that are stronger and more ...

A self-healing protective coating for concrete

Scientists are reporting development of what they describe as the first self-healing protective coating for cracks in concrete, the world's most widely used building material. Their study on the material—which is inexpensive ...

New route to build materials out of tiny particles

Researcher Laura Rossi and her group at TU Delft have found a new way to build synthetic materials out of tiny glass particles—so-called colloids. Together with their colleagues from Queen's University and the University ...

Volcanic glass spray shows promise in controlling mosquitoes

An indoor residual spray made by combining a type of volcanic glass with water showed effective control of mosquitoes that carry malaria, according to a new study. The findings could be useful in reducing disease-carrying ...

Some Chinese coal ash too radioactive for reuse

Manufacturers are increasingly using encapsulated coal ash from power plants as a low-cost binding agent in concrete, wallboard, bricks, roofing and other building materials. But a new study by U.S. and Chinese scientists ...

Construction using concrete reinforced with renewable materials

Tomorrow's building material is here today. Textile-reinforced concrete (TRC) is durable, formable in diverse shapes and suitable for lightweight construction. As the name suggests, conventional TRC is reinforced with carbon ...

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