Vitrification is a well-established waste treatment method that has been used for silicate based wastes to achieve waste volume reduction and improve chemical stability before further use. However, the poor mechanical strength of the vitrified products has led to a low commercial value and thus an unjustifiable use of energy-intensive thermal technology over the cheaper, although environmentally unsatisfactory, land disposal option. To overcome this issue, the emphasis of this work lies in demonstrating the feasibility of fabricating dense glass-ceramics from several types of waste and combination of wastes, which are generally superior to their parent glasses in their mechanical performance, as well as highly porous glassceramics to be used in building industries as an alternative to conventional waste disposal. The first part of the research work demonstrated the ease of production of an array of relatively dense glass-ceramic material from coal ash from thermal power plants using powder sintering technology. These products had robust physical and mechanical properties suitable to compete against commercially available building materials such as granite and marble for the floor and wall covering applications. A fully-dense, fine-grained, high-strength glass-ceramic was also fabricated from Feslag using an economically viable single-stage melt heat-treatment route. The ironslag derived glass-ceramic material had a unique composition, with an associated microstructure containing a high content of titanium-rich compounds, and has the potential for non-critical load-bearing applications. Finally, the thesis provides the results of an experimental study concerning with the production of highly porous glass-ceramic foams from a mixture of coal ash and waste glass with the addition of an inorganic foaming agent. The correlations between physical, thermal, and mechanical properties were carried out based on results from practical experiments, physical model studies and numerical simulations using X-ray microtomography and finite element analysis. It was concluded that, these waste-derived materials have the potential to be used in building applications where there can be a large demand to meet the large volumes of wastes available.

Le but de ce travail de thèse est de contrôler via un traitement de polarisation les propriétés physico-chimiques de surface des verres. Pour cela, l'implémentation d'une charge d'espace au sein de différents verres silicates et borosilicates a été caractérisée. Ces études comparatives ont montré que la déplétion des cations de l’anode vers la cathode induit l’apparition d’un champ électrique et des modifications structurales localisées. De plus, nous avons démontré que la formation d’un plasma entre l’anode et le verre pouvait être à l’origine de phénomènes d'échanges ioniques conduisant notamment à la formation d’entités azotées NO2/N2O4 piégées dans le verre. Par la suite, une étude des propriétés physico-chimiques des surfaces polarisées a été conduite. Les résultats préliminaires obtenus concernent l'influence de la charge d'espace sur (i) la mouillabilité, (ii) la chimie de surface et (iii) les réponses optiques de molécules adsorbées. / The purpose of this work is to control physicochemical properties of glasses surfaces using a thermal polarization treatment. For this, the implementation of a space charge layer has been characterized for various silicates and borosilicates glasses. These comparative studies have shown that cations depletion from anode toward cathode induces both an electric field and structural local changes. To go further, we demonstrated that there is a plasma formation between anode and glass surfaces which could be the cause of ionic exchange phenomena leading to the formation of nitrogen NO2/N2O4 entities entrapped inside glass network. Subsequently, physicochemical properties studies of polarized surfaces were performed. Preliminary results concerning the space charge influence on (i) surface wettability, (ii) surface chemistry and (iii) optical responses of adsorbed molecules on poled glass surface have been obtained.