Water Absorbing Plantation Clay for Vertical Greenery System

¹ Faculty of Engineering, Technology and Built Environment, UCSI University, Kula Lumpur Campus (North Wing,) Lot 12734, Jalan Choo Lip Kung, Taman Tayton View, 56000 Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
² Department of Physics, College of Science, Al-Hussein Bin Talal University, Ma’an, P.O Box 20, Jordan.

Abstract

With the arises of environmental conscious, the usage of vertical garden system has become more popular in urban cities. Citizens can enjoys the benefits of energy and cost saving besides ornamental effect. More investigations have been conducted on green facades led to the cities ecological enhancement.However, limited plants species can be planted for green facades systems as this system does not provide sufficient soil and nutrients for common plants. Alternative plantation methods such as planted box and felt system required additional maintenance attention. The idea of using clay composite which consists of nutritious soil, water absorbing polymer and flexible cement clay potentially become alternative vertical greenery systems that offers economic and sustainable plantation platform for more variety of plants.The fabricating of clay composite involved three processes, they are: mixing, moulding and drying. Physical properties characterisation (density, pH, compression test, aging test and water immersion test) were tested on the dried fabricated clay composite to ensure their sustainability in tropical climate. The results showed that clay composite with 1.5 wt% of cement and 0.3 wt% superabsorbent polymer shows optimum water absorbing properties. This system are expected to enable more agriculture activities in urban living.