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Preparation of foam glass from waste glass and fly ash

Article  in  Materials Letters · December 2014

DOI: 10.1016/j.matlet.2014.07.028

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 Materials Letters 136 (2014) 52–54

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Materials Letters
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matlet

Preparation of foam glass from waste glass and fly ash

Jianguang Bai, Xinghua Yang, Shaochun Xu, Wenjia Jing, Jianfeng Yang n
State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, People’s Republic of China

art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this paper, the utilization of waste glass and fly ash as starting materials to prepare foam glass was
Received 5 March 2014 studied. First, the result from TG–DTG revealed the appropriate foaming temperature was around 950 1C.
Accepted 5 July 2014 And then, foam glass was prepared which using waste glass and fly ash as starting materials, as well as
Available online 12 July 2014
SiC as foaming agent at 950 1C for 20 min successfully. The results show that the volume expansion
Keywords: multiple of the sample foamed at 950 1C for 20 min is 5.81 compared with the green body. X-ray
Foam glass diffraction revealed the peaks intensity of the observed phases decreased with the increase of
Waste glass temperature. The foam glass had a bulk density of 267.2 kg/m3, a compressive strength of 0.9829 MPa,
Fly ash and a porosity of 81.55%.
Bulk density
& 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Porosity

1. Introduction
Recently, re-use of waste glass and fly ash has raised a great
practical interest all over the world due to the disposal crisis and
environmental pollution [1–4]. To deal with these problems, many
new materials were developed, such as glass fibers, glass ceramics,
glass or glass–ceramics matrix composites, glass foam, or glass
ceramics foam, and foam glass was one of them [5–10]. Due to its
unique combination of properties, for example, lightweight, rigid,
thermally insulating, chemically inert and nontoxic, bacteria-
resistant, and water- and steam-resistant, low transport costs,
and so on, foam glass has a widely used both in construction and
many other fields [11–14]. In general, foam glass is prepared
usually by high temperature foaming process. The foaming agent
could be used to prepare a foam glass includes carbonates,
sulphates, C and SiC, and so on. And in this paper, SiC was used
as foaming agent.
In this research, foam glass were prepared which using waste
glass and fly ash as main starting materials, as well as SiC as foaming
agents. Additionally, bulk density, compressive strength, expansion
multiple and porosity of the foam glass are tested in detail.
2. Experimental
Waste glass and fly ash (XianYang WeiHe thermal power plant,
China) were used as main starting materials, and the chemical
compositions of such raw materials were shown at Table. 1.
n
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: studybai@126.com (J. Bai), yjf155@yahoo.com.cn (J. Yang).
Commercially available SiC powders with grain size (d50) 3.5 μm
was used as high-temperature foaming agents.
First, the waste glass which is mainly bottle glass and offered
by the recycling center is pulverized by planetary ball mill
(through 120 sieve mesh). And then, 84.75 wt% waste glass and
14.75 wt% fly ash, together with 0.5 wt% SiC are mixed using
wet ball-milling method with agate balls for 12 h. After drying, a
certain amount of the mixed powder is uniaxially pressed to form
cylindrical pellets with dimensions of Φ about 30
20 mm3. After
drying at 100–120 1C for 24 h in the oven, the green body is
foamed at about 950 1C for 20 min in a conventional chamber
furnace with the heating rate of 5 1C/min, and then cooled down in
the furnace at 4 1C/min to room temperature. All the heat treat-
ments are conducted in atmospheric ambient.
The bulk density was measured by the rate between the mass
and the volume. The total porosity was obtained from the bulk
density and the powder density of 2.525 g/cm3 as shown in the
following equation:
porosity ¼ ð1–bulkdensity=powderdensityÞ
100% ð1Þ
The compressive strengths of samples which were cut from the
cylinders with a normal size of about 32
32
24 mm3 were
measured using a crosshead speed of 0.5 mm/min. The loaded
surfaces were covered with a thin sponge layer to obtain uniform
load distribution over the faces. The volume expansion ratio was
calculated from the density of sintered sample and the green
density, and five samples having regular shapes and a sample
sintering in the same temperature without foam agent were used
for comparison. Differential thermal and gravimetric analyses
(TG–DTA) were carried out on TA Instruments Model SDT 2960
equipment, with a heating rate of 5 1C/min. The macrostructure

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.matlet.2014.07.028
0167-577X/& 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 J. Bai et al. / Materials Letters 136 (2014) 52–54
was observed by digital camera to get an overview of the shape
and size of cells and pores, and phase formation was characterized
by X-ray diffraction (XRD) using a Philips 1730/1820 instrument
(Cu Kα, 40 kV, 40 mA).
3. Results and discussion
Fig. 1 shows the TG–DTA curve of the mixture, for some of
the investigated glass compositions at a heating rate of 5 1C/min.
The results of TG–DTG revealed the viscosity achieved a minimum
value around 950 1C which is conducive to the preparation of foam
structure, and thus 950 1C was chosen as the foaming temperature
to prepare foam glass. Fig. 2 presents the side views and the
macrostructure of the sample foamed at 950 1C for 20 min.
From Fig. 2, the glass foam can be successfully prepared using
the waste glass and fly ash as starting materials, as well as SiC as
foaming agent; and the volume expansion multiple of the foamed
sample which was typically closed foam structure is 5.81 com-
pared with the green body. The XRD patterns of the samples
sintered at 600 and 900 1C for 20 min are shown in Fig. 3.
At 600 1C, reflections assigned to the crystalline phases of
mullite and cristobalite were detected. With the increase of the
temperature, a decrease in the intensity of the peaks can be
observed at 900 1C. This result revealed that the waste glass may
react with fly ash at high temperature.
Fig. 1. TG–DTA curves of the sample.
Fig. 2. Macrostructure of the sample foamed at 950 1C for 20 min.
53
Fig. 3. X-ray diffractograms of sample sintering at different temperature for
20 min: (a) 600 1C and (b) 900 1C.
Heating the green body up to 950 1C, the waste glass reacted
with fly ash and became into melt, and then the gas was produced
in the glass melt as shown in the following equation [15]:
SiCðsÞ þ 3=2O2 ðgÞ-SiO2 ðsÞ þ CO2 ðgÞ ð2Þ
SiCðsÞ þ 3=2O2 ðgÞ-SiO2 ðsÞ þ COðgÞ ð3Þ
SiCðsÞ þ O2  ðglassÞ-SiO2 ðglassÞ þ CO2 ðgÞ ð4Þ
SiCðsÞ þ O2  ðglassÞ-SiO2 ðglassÞ þ COðgÞ ð5Þ
where s, l and g in parentheses denote solid, liquid and gas,
respectively.
At high temperature, more and more CO and CO2 were released
according to the reaction (2)–(5) and dissolved in the melt to
diffuses to the bubble nuclei and make them grow up. The bubble
radius r is governed by the temperature according to equation
[16]:
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
rðT; tÞ ¼ β DðT; tÞt ð6Þ
where β is a dimensionless empirical constant, T is the foam
temperature, and DðT; tÞ is the effective diffusion coefficient.
kB T
DðT; tÞ ¼ ð7Þ
6πηðT; tÞr g
here, kB is Boltzmann’s constant, and r g is the radius of the gas
molecules.
With the further growth, bubbles are approaching and starting
to touch until equilibrium is reached [17]. The properties of foam
glass are tested and listed in Table 1. From the table, it could be
seen that the foam glass with bulk density of 267.2 kg/m3,
compressive strength of 0.9829 MPa, porosity of 81.55% and the
expansion multiple of 5.81 were obtained (Table 2).
4. Conclusions
Foam glass has been prepared using waste glass and fly ash as
starting materials, as well as SiC as high temperature foaming
agent successfully. Additionally, the macrostructure and the prop-
erties of foamed samples were studied. Experimental results state
as follows:
(1) The foamed sample had expanded obviously, and the macro-
structure of the foam was typically closed foam structure;
(2) The XRD results showed that the peaks intensity of the mullite
and cristobalite decreased with the increase of temperature;
54 J. Bai et al. / Materials Letters 136 (2014) 52–54

Table 1
Chemical compositions (wt%) of the raw materials used.

SiO2 Al2O3 Fe2O3 CaO MgO Na2O K2O TiO2 Total Loss on ignition (wt%) Main crystal phase

Fly ash 54.39 23.21 11.50 4.77 1.73 0.37 1.32 97.29 13.38 Mullite, Cristobolite
Waste glass 71.50 3.38 0.31 8.96 4.22 9.50 0.19 0.07 98.13 0.5

Table 2 References
Properties.

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[2] Andreola F, Barbieri L, Corradi A, Lancellotti. I. J Eur Ceram Soc
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Bulk density (kg/m3) 267.2 Porosity (%) 81.55
[3] Chen B, Luo ZW, Lu AX. Mater Lett 2011;65:3555–8.
Compressive strength (MPa) 0.9829 The expansion rate 5.81
[4] Chen B, Wang KQ, Chen XJ, Lu Anxian. Mater Lett 2012;79:263–5.
[5] Liu JL, Hu HL, Li PJ, Shuai CJ, Peng SP. Mater Manuf Processes 2013;28:610–5.
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strength of 0.9829 MPa, porosity of 81.55% and the expansion [9] Mangutova Bianka, Fidancevska Emilija, Milosevski Milosav, Bossert Joerg.
multiple of 5.81 were obtained. Mater Lett 2004;35:103–10.
[10] Hojaji H. MRS Proc 1988;136:185–206.
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This work was supported by the National Natural Science 2007;27:861–5.
Foundation of China (Grant no. 51272205, 51072157, A3 Foresight [16] Nagrath Sunitha, Jansen Kenneth E, Lahey Richard T. Comput Meth Appl Mech
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