Characterisation and Properties of Sintered Glass-Ceramics Produced from Recycling Glass by Using Pressure-Less Method

Abstract

The aim of this research is to develop glass ceramic produced from recycling glass. Waste glass (e.g. container and bottles) of soda lime silica (SLS) glasses is utilised as main raw materials for the formulation of glass ceramic batch composition with the addition of ball clay. The ball clay was added in order to favour shaping. The recycled glass powder are then mixed with the ball clay according to the ratio of SLSG to ball clay of 95:5 wt.%, 90:10 wt.% and 85:15 wt.%. Differential Thermal Analyses (DTA) was carried out in order to determine the thermal characteristic glass powder prior to the batch formulation. The glass was then crushed, milled and sieved to < 75µm and mixed with the ball clay before it was pressed to a pellet by pressure-less method. This pressure-less route is conducted as an approach to a simple fabrication route of the glass-ceramic samples. The green samples are then sintered at different temperature. The dense and strong glass ceramic samples were obtaining at 850oC, with holding time of one hour and morphological characterized with X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) analyses. Results shown that glass ceramic samples produced at this optimized sintering profile had high density and microhardness value with low porosity and negligible water absorption. Overall results indicates that glass ceramic samples have good mechanical properties (e.g. microhardness exceeding 700Hv) and physical properties (e.g. water absorption, density, porosity making them attractive to the structural application. These results are also utilised as a comparison to a glass ceramic samples produced via Cold Isostatic Press (CIP) from the same batch composition formulation and sintering profiles for the purpose of optimizing the waste glass utilization.