A Novel Approach to Fabricate Foam Ceramics from Steel Slag

Abstract

A novel approach is used for fabricating steel slag foam ceramics based on the particle-stabilized foaming method. In this work, steel slag was used as the raw material and propyl gallate (PG) was used as the surface modifier. For the first time, steel slag ceramic foams were successfully fabricated based on particle-stabilized foams. The results show that the stability of the ceramic foams was closely related to the pH value and PG concentration. The porosity and compressive strength could be controlled by changing the solid loading of steel slag and sintering temperature. The porosity of steel slag foam ceramics ranged from 85.6% to 62.53%, and the compressive strength was from 1.74 MPa to 10.42 MPa. The thermal conductivity of steel slag foam ceramics was only 0.067 W (m·K)−1, which shows that it could be used as a thermal insulation material.