Lesson 1: "Farmer" engineer and the brick press

(Baonghean) -Although there are many difficulties in knowledge, facilities, and people's habits in using traditional fired bricks as construction materials... However, the concerns that farmers' cultivated land is gradually being destroyed by manual fired brick kilns; the environment is increasingly threatened by pollution from smoke and dust from brick kilns have further urged Mr. Ho Van Hoan in Hamlet 6, Quynh Van (Quynh Luu) to explore and research. And a new product of unfired bricks has been successfully created by him and is being used by many individuals and organizations.

Coming to Quynh Luu on a hot sunny day, passing Giat Town, before our eyes were countless brick casting facilities that the locals often call "shells", scientists call them unburnt bricks. Unburnt bricks are dried by the people on both sides of National Highway 1A. Not only production, people here have used this product very commonly, from building fences to building multi-storey houses. Many projects are being built from this type of brick.

With only 40-50 million VND, you can own a machine to produce unburnt bricks with a capacity of 5-6 thousand bricks/shift (1 shift is equivalent to 1 working day). In Quynh Van, everyone knows that the "author" of that technology is farmer engineer Ho Van Hoan (born 1960) in hamlet 6, Quynh Van (Quynh Luu), owner of the private enterprise Ho Hoan Cau. Like many other rural areas, people are no longer unfamiliar with the scene of digging up rice fields, kneading and burning them, causing smoke to billow. Along with the birth of bricks, the environment is threatened, rice fields are constantly being dug up. Therefore, using burnt clay will seriously affect the cultivated land and food security. In addition, burnt bricks require a significant amount of firewood, and a huge amount of fossil coal must be used, leading to deforestation and ecological imbalance. Realizing that inadequacy, Mr. Ho Van Hoan, a mechanical engineer with many years of experience in casting iron and manufacturing machinery, has struggled to research and successfully manufacture a machine to produce unburnt bricks.

Unburnt brick press machine manufactured by Ho Hoan Cau enterprise.

Mr. Hoan confided: Our family has been working in the mechanical industry serving rural agricultural production since 1990. For nearly 20 years, we have researched, designed, manufactured, and repaired all kinds of machinery, equipment, and agricultural tools serving agricultural production. In 2004, when researching the construction market, I found that the demand for materials in rural areas was very large, while burnt brick products greatly affected the living environment, so I researched and manufactured a cement-pressed brick production line (dashboard molding machine). From the initial capacity of 2,000 bricks/shift, it has now been improved to reach a capacity of 6,000 bricks/shift. From a mechanical press, it has now been switched to an automatic press. This is a cheap construction materials production line: raw materials are stone powder, sand, gravel, 0.5 stone; 1x2 stone with cement through a kneading machine into a mixture, pressed in 2 to 3 days and can be used for construction immediately.

The Head of the Department of Industry and Trade - People's Committee of Quynh Luu district commented: The unburnt brick pressing machine of Ho Hoan Cau enterprise has contributed to cleaning the environment, in line with the development trend of the country as well as the world; convenient for users, bringing high economic efficiency to help eliminate hunger and reduce poverty in remote, mountainous areas thanks to the use of local raw materials to press into bricks. In addition, because it does not have to go through the burning stage, the technology helps save energy, does not cause environmental pollution; cleans the environment (taking advantage of raw materials as solid waste in industry). Along with the social effects is the economic effect: low cost, low investment capital, compact equipment, simple factory, saving transportation due to on-site production... Another good thing about this brick pressing machine is that from individuals to organizations can invest in production.

Due to its high popularity, in May 2010, Mr. Ho Van Hoan was invited by the Vietnam Association of Building Materials to attend the International Conference on Unburnt Materials in Hanoi. Thanks to the superior features of the line, many customers in other provinces and cities have come to order and use it. Not only that, the brick production line of Ho Hoan Cau enterprise is also present in neighboring countries such as Laos, Angola, and Africa (brought there by Vietnamese people). Quynh Van commune alone currently has 100 lines. Many communes in Ky Anh (Ha Tinh) also installed this type of machine. In 2008, the facility sold 250 sets of lines, in 2009 sold 300 sets. In 2010 and 2011, hundreds of customers regularly placed orders. Each set of line requires 5 direct workers plus 5 loading and unloading workers to consume and supply materials. The cement brick production line has been registered for copyright at the Vietnam Intellectual Property Office. In 2007, it was granted a patent and won the third prize in the Nghe An Science and Technology Innovation Competition.

Dashboard bricks are not unfamiliar to many people, especially during the subsidy period, when the production and use of tunnel technology bricks were not as popular as they are now. I remember, around the 80s of the last century, like many other families, my parents had to make their own bricks for many years to build a new house. The raw materials were sand, coal slag after cooking and potash (and also bricks, tiles, lime mortar from old buildings) ... After being mixed, the raw materials were poured into molds the size of 3 - 4 bricks now, and hammered hard. After being compressed, the mold was taken out... and continued to be made. Just like that, the whole session only yielded a few dozen bricks. However, many families were self-sufficient in bricks partly because of economic difficulties, partly because at that time red bricks were not as popular as they are now. Nowadays, making dashboard bricks has become much more advanced, using modern machinery. It is worth mentioning that, with the environmental issue becoming urgent as it is today, the use and replication of the model of cement bricks without using land and fuel is extremely important.

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Thu Huyen