Abstract

Brick clay is a well known type of clay which is available at various locations in world and the name was realized because of the constantly usages in the industry of brick manufacturing that based on the condign characteristic with the necessitate features for the bricks. The investigations of the fundamental and advanced physic-chemical characteristics of a type of Sri Lankan brick clay and bespeaking of the more advanced industrial uses of such clays are the ultimate realities of the existing study. The collected clay samples from a particular location were fundamentally characterized by testing the natural moisture content, grain size distribution, acidity of raw clay samples and the water absorption, bulk density, porosity and mechanical strengths of prepared bricks under 8000C using such clay In addition that those clay samples were characterized using X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrophotometer, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectrophotometer and X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectrophotometer. As the retributions of those analyses, mainly observed 6.57 of PH, uniformly graded grain size distribution, 37.36% clay and silt portion according to the weight and 21.45% natural moisture content from raw clay samples and 19.88% water absorption, 3.15 gcm-3of bulk density, 62.70% of porosity, 17.25MPa compressive strength, 0.31MPa splitting tensile strength from prepared bricks. The compositional analysis results showed 84% of Fe content with trace amounts of Ti, Ba and Ca, presence of calcite, quartz and more Fe minerals while lacking of any hazardous elements or compounds such as the heavy metals. By considering the characters of brick clay, it is possible to recommend this clay for the applications of water treatments, ceramic manufacturing, refractory material and sorption (adsorber) material for removal of metals.