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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:484739 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Wu, Jeremy Po-Wei |
| Contributors | Rawlings, Rees |
| Publisher | Imperial College London |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/11374 |
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