Waste-to-Reuse Foam Glasses Produced from Soda-Lime-Silicate Glass, Cathode Ray Tube Glass, and Aluminium Dross

Abstract

Aluminium dross is a hazardous industrial waste generated during aluminium production. It contains metallic oxides of aluminium and magnesium, other phases (aluminum nitride), and residues of fluxes and salts from the melting process of aluminium. Discarding this by-product is considered an environmental and economic challenge due to the high reactivity of dross with water or even air humidity. After removing the hazardous components from the as-received dross, one of the optional approaches is to incorporate the treated dross into construction materials. Dross is applied in several types of research as a secondary raw material source for alumina, clinker, cement or glass-ceramic production, but only a few papers focus on the usage of dross as a foaming agent for foams. Even fewer research are reported where dross was applied as a basic component of foam glasses. In this work, foam glasses were produced completely from waste materials: Aluminium dross, container (SLS) glass, and cathode ray tube (CRT) glass. The research holds several specificities, i.e., combining two industrial waste materials (CRT glass and dross), and adding an increased amount from the wastes. The physical and mechanical characteristics were examined with a special focus on the effect of the foam glass components on the microstructure, density, thermal conductivity, and compressive strength.

Study on the thermal conductivity and density of foam glass

“…Based on previous experiments [17,18] and a short literature review [5,11,19,20], the weight ratio of the foaming agent was considered to change in three levels with a 0.5 wt% step as follows: 1 wt%, 1.5 wt%, and 2 wt%.…”

Preparation and characterization of foam glass from soda lime silicate glass waste by using different dosages of limestone

“…Normally, the thermal conductivity depends on the chemical composition, cell size and wall thickness of the foam. The thermal conductivity decreases as the size of the cells increases (Sassi and Simon, 2022). The cells are able to block the transmission of the heat flow.…”