Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining - International Clay Technology Association

ICT  Annual Dinner 19^th January 2006

The evening of 19/01/06 saw the North Staffs Branch Annual Dinner allied to the chairman’s fund raising event with an attendance of 162 people at the Moat House, Festival Park from across the industry and its supporting suppliers.

The guests for the evening were Mr Michael Driver ICT chair, Mr Terry Noble Immediate past president, Peter Wegmann deputy chair, Mrs Barbara Clark of the blood transfusion service and Richard Stevens OBE retired judge and guest speaker.

The branch chairman spoke of the loss of two local manufacturers but welcomed the building of a tile new plant hoping that this would replace some of the loss and urged the branch membership to greater support of the branch and its activities. Mr Michael Driver in proposing the ICT and Mr Terry Noble in responding spoke of the merger with the IOM3 and stressed the benefits to both organisations.  

The evening concluded with a tombola, with a range of exciting prizes donated by the sponsoring companies, this raised £1,600 for the chairman’s charity, which was accepted on behalf of  the blood transfusion service by Mrs Barbara Clark - additionally a number of people signed up to become blood donors.

Chairman presenting cheque to Barbara

Glen Pierpoint and Richard Stevens demonstrate that all those study courses were worthwhile

Penelope Reid and Barbara Clark

Technical Innovation in the Brick Industry by Terry Harrison of Ibstock Brick

The talk on Thursday 2nd February 2006 at Ibstock Chesterton works was very well attended with fourteen members in attendance.

The talk centred on using alternative raw materials, sometimes regarded as waste streams in Ibstock’s products.

Under discussion was Diatomaceous Earth as used in the brewing industry but this contained a polymer that unfortunately generated NOx compounds when heated to 1100ºC. After much laboratory work this information was discovered and make a very important point, which is to investigate what reactions take place at ceramic temperatures before long term trials commence.

Ibstock has had WRAP funding for full factory trials using finely ground glass as an additive in clay bricks. At 5% and 10% addition of powdered glass (100% less than 150 microns) will give the same ceramic properties at a reduced top temperature (Saving 50ºC). The firing under load results indicates that shrinkage of 4% at 1120ºC can be achieved at 1070ºC with 10% glass, thus saving energy.

The logic works the other around achieving higher compressive strengths, lower water absorptions by adding glass at the same temperature.

The only downside is that trials at Stourbridge gave a £0.68 saving on gas per thousand bricks in 2004 and the glass cost about £4.75 per thousand. Therefore it costs more to use the glass than it saves.

The main practical problem that Ibsock had in adding the fine glass powder was the excessive dust generated when dropping it onto standard conveyer belts. A closed addition system is required.

PFA, Fuel Ash, Bone Ash, Paper Sludge, Sewerage Sludge, Water Treatment Residue were all covered in the talk in a very amusing manner. Terry was very entertaining and gave a good presentation.

The following discussion started by Dr Michael Anderson of Staffordshire University asking a few pertinent questions relating to brick companies investing £800,000 in a glass milling plant. Terry thought that CRH and Ibstock could not justify the cost.

This lead on to discussions on the brick companies going direct to the county councils for bottle glass collected from residential properties. By-passing the Biffa’s of this world and entering into long term contracts.

This was duly noted as a good point but the time is not right and raised issues over the Environment Agency hindering the whole process by requiring the site operator to comply with Waste Transfer Site or Waste Management Site regulations. These regulations put the nail in the coffin of these very interesting projects.

Mr. Andrew Biggs of Akristos was asked for his views from a brokering angle. It seems that a waste producer may have a waste that is expensive to dispose of and when a Brick Company shows an interest in it then it becomes a chargeable product.

Mr. Biggs described how Akristos helped to educate both parties, which can lead to the gate fees, been shared or a small fee been paid, dependent upon the added value to the process concerned.

Dr. Penny Reid of Staffordshire University mentioned that some end users are willing to pay a premium for products with a significant recycled content. This was backed up with comments off Mr. Neil Sullivan with his experiences within the brick industry. To achieve a premium priced product requires a highly trained and dedicated sales team to market the Eco-Brick Product (Akristos – Trade Mark).

Terry Harrison disagreed from the point of a large-scale brick maker; most customers are driven by price and expect a brick containing a waste product to be cheaper. This is rarely the case due to the extra processing involved to make the Eco-Brick Product.

Terry reminisced over a few telephone conversations that he had. One went something like this:- S Hello Terry I believe you make glass bricks. T No we make clay bricks and have done a few trials with adding a small amount of glass to the mix. S Oh! We will be millionaires. T How come. S I’ve got lots of glass collected from universities. T That’s good is it ground to less than 150 microns. S Eh! Its bottled glass. T is it processed? S Yes! I wash the bottles out. T No! I mean is it ground. S Oh! A few bottles get broken. T Is there any Pyrex Laboratory Glass mixed in? C Sometimes but not always.  T How will it be delivered to the brick works. S I can drop you off a few skips at a time. T We need to have it sorted so not to contain any Pyrex and it should all be ground to less than 150 microns and delivered in sealed containers. The skip man ends the phone call by putting his hand set down.

From this phone conversation it is easy to understand the difficulties a waste handling company may have when discussing alternative raw materials with a brick maker. This is where a brokering service comes in.