Rice Hull Ash Cement (RHAC)

The ash from rice hulls or husks is an affordable and effective substitute. When burned between 700 to
750 degrees Celsius, the ash from palay coverings offer binding properties that make it a suitable additive
to cement solutions. Since rice is a common crop in the country, RHAC building materials are easy to
sustain. These blocks are as durable as the concrete hollow blocks yet much cheaper

Rice husk is an agricultural residue which accounts for 20% of the 649.7 million tons of rice produced
annually worldwide1. The produced partially burnt husk from the milling plants when used as a fuel also
contributes to pollution and efforts are being made to overcome this environmental issue by utilizing this
material as a supplementary cementing material2. The chemical composition of rice husk is found to vary
from one sample to another due to the differences in the type of paddy, crop year, climate and
geographical conditions3.

Burning the husk under controlled temperature below 800 C can produce ash with silica mainly in
amorphous form3-5. Recently, Nair et al.6 reported an investigation on the pozzolanic activity of RHA by
using various techniques in order to verify the effect of incineration temperature and burning duration.
He stated that the samples burnt at 500 or 700 C and burned for more than 12 hours produced ashes
with high reactivity with no significant amount of crystalline material. The short burning durations (15 -
360 minutes) resulted in high carbon content for the produced RHA even with high incinerating
temperatures of 500 to 700 C. A state-of-the-art report on rice husk ash (RHA) was published by Mehta7
in 1992, and contains a review of physical and chemical properties of RHA, the effect of incineration
conditions on the pozzolanic characteristics of the ash, and a summary of the research findings from
several countries on the use of RHA as a supplementary cementing pozzolanic material.

According to the author's literature, RHA has not been utilized in the construction industry yet, the reason
for that may be due to the lack of understanding of the RHA blended concrete characteristics.

Coconut Lumber

While palm trees have grown in the different parts of the Philippines since the early portion of the 20th
century, these were primarily just for the harvesting of coconuts. When trees stopped bearing fruit, it was
commonly just felled to give way for the plantation of new trees.

With the increase in prices of more commonly used lumber variants, recent years have seen the
exploration of palm trees as an alternative source. The once low valued senile coconut palm trees have
since been promoted as a source of income for the lumber industry, with the material a source of veneer
and numerous building products.
Bamboo

Bamboo might seem trendy, but it has actually been a locally-sourced building material in some regions
of the world for millennia. What makes bamboo such a promising building material for modern buildings
is its combination of tensile strength, light weight, and fast-growing renewable nature. Used for framing
buildings and shelters, bamboo can replace expensive and heavy imported materials and provide an
alternative to concrete and rebar construction, especially in difficult-to reach areas, post-disaster
rebuilding, and low-income areas with access to natural locally-sourced bamboo.

Fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) is concrete containing fibrous material which increases its structural
integrity. It contains short discrete fibers that are uniformly distributed and randomly oriented. Fibers
include steel fibers, glass fibers, synthetic fibers and natural fibers. Within these different fibers that
character of fiber reinforced concrete changes with varying concretes, fiber materials, geometries,
distribution, orientation and densities.