A Newly Bio-Based Material for the Construction Industry Using Gypsum Binder and Rice Straw Waste (Oryza sativa)

Construction is one of the economic sectors with the greatest influence on climate change. In addition to working procedures, the primary carbon footprint is attributed to the choice of materials and the energy required for their manufacturing. The underlying idea of this study is to minimize the effects and offer new solutions to emerging problems in the quest for materials that can be deemed as natural, such as gypsum (calcium sulphate dihydrate) and rice straw (Oryza sativa). The acquisition of these materials involves a lower carbon footprint compared to the conventional materials. It is well known since ancient times that gypsum and cereal straw can be used in construction, with numerous examples still available. Cereal straw is one of the oldest construction materials, traditionally combined with earth and occasionally with certain binders, with it continuing to be employed in construction in many countries to this day. This work showcases the feasibility of producing stable prefabricated elements from straw waste with construction gypsum, addressing a significant environmental concern posed by the alternative of having to burn such materials. In this study, for the proposed bio-based material, specific tests, such as thermal conductivity, flexural and compressive strength, and fire resistance, were carried out to evaluate the principal physical and mechanical characteristics for different compositions of water, gypsum, and straw fiber samples. The results highlighted the good performance of the proposed materials in order to spread their use in the green building industry. The addition of straw fibers improved, in different ways, some important physical characteristics of these components so as to diminish environmental pollution and to obtain better material performance. The tests highlighted the different behaviors of the proposed material with respect to the different cuts of the straw and as well as the water/gypsum ratio; this is not very well understood and probably depends on the micro structure of the straw fibers. The blocks with raw straw showed a significant improvement in the breaking mechanism (1775.42 N) compared to the blocks with cut straw (712.26 N) when subjected to bending tests, and their performance in compression tests was also acceptable. Additionally, a very interesting reduction in thermal conductivity was achieved by incorporating rice straw (0.233 W/mK), and high fire exposure times were obtained, with gypsum preventing the spread of ignition in any type of fiber.