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Transferring
and drying
The freshly cut bricks
are put on palettes and transferred to the drying ovens. The transfer cares are
manned.
The bricks are put in
racks and dried. The dryers serve to reduce the moisture content of the bricks
slowly to avoid cracking of bricks.
The oven temperature
is 60-70 C
and the heat is transferred by convection .the process takes between 20-40
hours depending on the soil variety and the initial moisture content. The dried
bricks are transferred to the kilns to be fired.
The
dried bricks are transferred to the kilns to be fired.
the most
commonly used method is hack
lines which is obviously a problem during
the wet
season. The other
methods are chamber dryers or
continuous tunnel dryers.
Huffman
kilns
Bricks need to
be fired so that they can become hard and strong .for decade's only two
types of kilns have been used to fire clay bricks. The Huffman kiln and
the tunnel kiln. The Huffman kiln is built using clay bricks and costs
less to build than the tunnel kiln but costs more in the long run due to
energy wastage. This type of kiln has been very popular in the past but
is loosing ground to the tunnel kiln due to its higher fuel efficiency
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