Synthesis mullite ceramics from industry waste

Abstract

Waste recycle is one of the interesting topic in both academia and industry. This research focuses on recycling the industry waste (sludge cake from aluminum scrap and dross recycling industry and rice husk ash) to synthesis mullite. Mullite is one of ceramics structures that has good property on corrosion, good mechanical property and low COE which are in need of ceramics industry. Mullite contains alumina oxide and silica oxide (3Al2O3 2SiO2). In this study, we used 72% of sludge cake from aluminum scrap and dross recycling industry and 28% of rice husk ash as starting raw materials. The sample was grounded in ball mill for 1 hour, pressed by hydraulic compression, fired at the temperatures of 1200-1280C and soaked at the highest temperature for 1 hour. The test pieces were tested by XRD, water absorption and firing shrinkage tests. XRD shown that minor crystal structure of mullite were formed at 1280C. It can conclude that the raw material from industry waste tends to be usefull to synthesis mullite at the high temperature.