Manufacturing Cordierite Mullite and Mullite Filters from Sanitary Ware Kiln Wastes for Use in Metal Casting Industry

Abstract

The metallic melts shaped with casting method include impurities within the product. The ceramic foam filters are used for removing these impurities. Proverbially, the mullite based filters is suitable for high temperature applications as its technical features such as low coefficient of thermal expansion, chemical and mechanical stability at higher temperature and thermal shock resistance. Due to these properties, mullite is the potential matrix material for relatively higher temperature applications. In this study, the wasted sanitary ware kiln materials are utilized to investigate as the source of material for mullite and cordierite mullite ceramic filter. In this context, Ece Banyo Sanitary Ware Plant's kiln roller materials and kiln plates are used (both of which are cordierite-mullite and alumina mullite) in the manufacturing ceramic foam filter. This work is a preliminary study about how to utilize wasted kiln materials in order to manufacture value-added materials. Physical, chemical, mineralogical, thermo gravimetric, micro-structure and sintering behavior tests are made over these prescription samples. Also these tests have been made for nowadays marketing filters-mullite and cordierite mullite-for benchmarking. On the basis of the test results, the best suitable prescription specimen is being selected and shaped with foaming process. Furthermore, the shaped filters are being tested in casting process. It is concluded that a mullite-cordierite based foam filter production which can be used in the metal casting industry is proven to be realized by recycling mullite and cordierite-mullite based ceramic materials that are used in the ceramic sanitary ware industry.