Porous Glass-Ceramic Composite from Recycled Soda Lime Silica Glass and Charcoal Carbon

Abstract

Glass ceramic composite was produced from soda lime silicate waste glass, ball clay and charcoal carbon as an alternative method to recycle waste glass. The objective of the study was to investigate the effects of charcoal carbon content (wt. %) to the sintered glass ceramic on their modulus, water absorption, apparent porosity, linear shrinkage and bulk density. The powder mixtures of soda lime silicate glass, ball clay and carbon were compacted by uniaxial pressing method and sintered at 850 °C with heating rate of 2 °C/min and one hour dwelling time. The main phase identified by X-ray diffraction method in sintered samples are quartz and wollastonite. It was observed that higher carbon content results in higher porosity, higher water absorption and lower bulk density and modulus of rupture. SEM analysis showed that there was significant variation in morphology of the porosity with the changes in carbon content. The optimised properties is at 1 wt.% of carbon content containing average pore size of 5-12 μm, with lowest porosity percentage of 1.79 %, water absorption of 0.77%, linear shrinkage of 12.89%  and highest bulk density and modulus of 48.2 MPa and 4.3% respectively. The study shows that low-density and porous materials can be made from recycled soda lime silicate and ball clay mixed with charcoal additive.