Lampang Raw Material Characterization to Assess the Suitability for Ceramics Industry

Abstract

Lampang, a province in northern Thailand, is the important source of ceramics raw materials, such as kaolin, pottery stone, and ball clay. This study aims to investigate the new ceramics bodies by using these local raw materials. About 50 samples from 15 sources were collected to analyze the chemical composition, mineral composition, and physical properties. Kaolin samples principally consisted of quartz and kaolinite. Its greyish color after firing at 1200 °C made it suitable for stoneware product that does not require white body. The principal ball clay mineral is kaolinite, associated with illite and quartz. All ball clay samples are high strength, which are suitable for tableware production. Pottery stone which can be found at Kaolin deposit, showed a mixed mineralogy of quartz, albite, and muscovite, while some samples showed the presence of kaolinite. It showed significantly low on shrinkage. Pottery stone are widely used as flux in both ceramics body and glaze. These analyzed characteristics were put into the ceramics raw materials database which can be searched on-line. This data is useful for the researching of ceramics body compositions with mainly contained raw materials from Lampang.