Speaker
Description
The use of inorganic industrial wastes as alternative raw materials in the silicate industry is not a new idea. For examples: the first publication on the addition of metallurgical slag to "terracotta" was published in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society in 1918; slag-sitalls was developed in the former Soviet Union in 1958, i.e. only few years after the discovery of glass-ceramics.
In recent years, however, this option has become more relevant due to the growing environmental problems, the limited amounts of some of the raw materials and especially because of stricter landfilling regulations. As a result, the scientific level in this field has increased significantly.
The lecture summarized main part of the results of the author and his colleagues over the last decade. The research is related mainly to new approaches, allowing the usage of large percentages of inorganic industrial waste in the following areas:
• Vitrification of iron-rich harmful metallurgical wastes and development of attractive tiling bulk and sintered glass-ceramics.
• Foam glass-ceramics and ceramics, obtained by autocatalytic reduction of iron oxides.
• New building ceramics with higher crystallinity and improved mechanical characteristics by metallurgical slags or bottom ashes from urban incinerators.
Finally, the efforts to establish a pilot center for ceramics and glass-ceramics from industrial waste on the territory of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences are presented and discussed.
Acknowledgements: This research was financially supported by the projects KP-06-N67/13.
Keywords: industrial wastes, ceramics, glass-ceramics, inorganic foams
| Scientific Sections | Revalorization of bio- and industrial waste |
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