New Glass Bricks Promise to be Colorful and Eco-friendly
Just think of the massive amounts of television screens that are destined for the landfill as we continue to draw toward the close of the analog age. It would be nice if we could use them for building stuff. Well, we are actually on the verge of doing just that!
The technology company Geofusion is opening a factory within a year that will produce facing bricks made of recycled glass. Besides any standard-type of glass the process can also use computer screens and television screens.
Some of the attributes of these bricks are quite startling. They can be produced in a rainbow of color… well, actually, any color you may want. Their texture can be specified and they have the unique ability to have porosity built-in. You may wonder why that would be beneficial. It seems that many of the floods and water shortages of the current age can be traced to urban and commercial developments that disrupt the flow of the water back to the ground. So if the building blocks of those developments were porous then water falling on car parks and building walls could be captured and reused.
Since the bricks, and other things made with the same process like pavers, can be recycled several times the company says they make it possible to create recyclable buildings. There is no extraction necessary so you don’t need huge quarries with their attendant ecological issues, and the manufacturing process uses less energy for firing than traditional bricks. According to Geofusion glass bricks are fired at 650 degrees C for less than seven hours and traditional brick are fired at 1,050 degrees C in a three day process. Robots will do the packing of the glass bricks.
