Author(s)

Herve Goure Doubi^1*, Alfred Niamien Kouamé², Léon Koffi Konan², Monique Tognonvi¹, Samuel Oyetola²

¹Unité de Formation et de Recherche des Sciences biologiques, Université Péléforo Gon Coulibaly de Korhogo, Korhogo, Côte d’Ivoire.
²Laboratoire de Chimie des Matériaux Inorganiques (LCMI), Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny de Cocody-Abidjan, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.

Currently, in a context of sustainable development, the economic and environmental challenges incite, to valorize local materials such as clays and agro-industrial waste. It is in this approach that a new category of compressed earth bricks (BTC) stabilized with shea meal (TK) and cement was proposed. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of shea meal rate on the thermal conductivity properties of cement stabilized earth bricks. A lateritic clay (Lat) mainly composed of kaolinite (38.44%), quartz (24.94%), goethite (12.28%), hematite (4.44%) and illite (19.9%) was used to make bricks. Different mix designs made up of lateritic clay and 5% cement were studied. The shea meal is added as a partial lateritic clay replacement in different proportions. The thermal conductivity was determined by hot disk method and correlated to both porosity and density of elaborated materials. The results obtained show that the thermal conductivity and density of bricks decrease respectively from 0.72 W·m^-1·K^-1 to 0.52 W·m^-1·K^-1 and from 2.77 g·cm^-3 to 2.52 g·cm^-3. The presence of shea meal within the material generates pore formation, which may partly explain the improvement of the thermal insulation properties. A positive correlation was noted between density and thermal conductivity of these materials.

Lateritic Clay, Shea Meal, Compressed Earth Brick (CEB), Thermal Conductivity and Eco-Materials

Doubi, H. , Kouamé, A. , Konan, L. , Tognonvi, M. and Oyetola, S. (2017) Thermal Conductivity of Compressed Earth Bricks Strengthening by Shea Butter Wastes with Cement. Materials Sciences and Applications, 8, 848-858. doi: 10.4236/msa.2017.812062.