Mechanical behaviour and microstructure of an artificial stone slab prepared using a SiO2 waste crucible and quartz sand
Introduction
Artificial stone slabs have recently become an increasingly important construction material for covering walls or paving floors because of their high bending strength, low water absorption, low porosity and superior abrasion performance [1]. As a high-quality aggregate of artificial stones, quartz sand is now used in massive quantities [2]; however, its preparation requires significant resources. Economic and ecologic considerations point to one demand: sustainability [3], [4], [5]. Thus, significant research efforts have focused on finding alternative materials to replace conventional aggregate [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18].
There are two types of artificial stone: resin-based and cement-based stone. Regarding resin-based artificial stone, the major alternative material is the direct waste generated during stone processing, especially marble waste [1], [6], [7], [8], waste stone sludge [9], [10], [11], and glass fibre-reinforced plastic (FRP) [12]. Another type of alternative material is the waste produced in industrial production such as waste glass [1], fly ash [13], [14], and steel slag [15]. For the recycling of marble waste, the best properties of artificial stone slabs have been reported by Lee et al. [1]. In that study, waste glass and stone fragments were recycled as raw materials, and artificial stone slabs with a high compressive strength of 148.8 MPa were obtained. To reduce the porosity and obtain a higher mechanical strength, the vibratory compaction method in a vacuum environment has been commonly adopted, whereas other techniques have been attempted. For example, Ribeiro et al. [6] fabricated artificial ornamental stone (AOS) using marble residue via a resin transfer molding (RTM) process. Although AOS has a lower mechanical, it could be used as interior wall lining tiles with both acoustic and thermal insulation characteristics.
Some waste materials cannot be used to prepare resin-based artificial stone with a higher strength. They are usually made into cement-based artificial stone and have a lower mechanical strength and economic value, such as stone slurry [16] and limestone dust [17]. Marble residues have also been used to prepare cement-based artificial stone [3], [4], [18]. Experimental results show that both resin-based and cement-based artificial stones have lower mechanical properties when raw materials are used, such as limestone, marble or travertine stone, which are mainly composed of CaCO3. However, artificial stone slabs synthesized with SiO2 usually have a higher flexural strength and lower water absorption.
The alternative raw material used in this research is a SiO2 waste crucible. A fused silica crucible is a container for preparing polycrystalline silicon, and it can be used only once because of the change of phase and volume that occurs during the casting process [19], [20]. The amount of crucible waste in China is estimated to be approximately 100.000 tons per year, and the crucible residue is left in the open air and increases environmental risks. Compared with waste glass, which is usually used as an aggregate in concrete [21], [22], [23], [24], a SiO2 waste crucible has better thermal stability and chemical stability. Therefore, research on construction materials based on SiO2 waste crucibles is valuable. However, to our knowledge, there have been few reports on the fabrication of high-value construction slabs using recycled SiO2 waste crucibles. This research, which focused on producing a high-quality artificial stone slab using a waste SiO2 crucible in the laboratory, aimed to offer a solution for recycling huge amounts of SiO2 waste crucibles that are accumulating in the environment surrounding the related industries.
Parameters that characterize the properties of artificial stone usually include the type and content of coupling agents [25], the type and content of resins [9], curing methods [8], the curing time [8], [26] and compaction conditions [1]. Therefore, the effects of the coupling agent content, unsaturated polymer resin (UPR) content, compaction time and curing time on the physical properties of an artificial stone slab made from a SiO2 waste crucible were experimentally studied in this work. Because of the depleting supply of natural resources, the recycling of SiO2 waste crucibles into construction material not only creates new products but also prevents environmental pollution.
Section snippets
Materials
In this study, quartz sand was used as the coarse aggregate, and SiO2 waste crucible powder was used as the fine aggregate. The UPR, coupling agent and hardener were pre-mixed to produce a binder. Details of the materials used are provided below.
Chemical analysis was conducted on the quartz sand and SiO2 waste crucible using inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES, Spectro, Blue Sop), and the results are presented in Table 1. Both raw materials are comprised of mainly
Effect of the coupling agent
Effects of the coupling agent content on the compressive and flexural strength of artificial stone are presented in Fig. 4(a). The results indicate that the compressive and flexural strength first increase and then stabilize slowly with an increase in coupling agent content. By increasing the coupling agent content from 0.4 to 1.2‰ (Fig. 4(a)), the compressive strength increased from 141.0 to 173.1 MPa, and the flexural strength increased from 55.8 to 74.0 MPa. Fig. 4(b) shows the bulk density
Conclusions
In this paper, a solution for recycling SiO2 waste crucibles as artificial stone is proposed. The artificial stones were prepared using vibratory compaction in a vacuum environment, and the SiO2 waste crucible powder was used as the fine aggregate instead of traditional quartz sand. The following conclusions can be drawn from this study:
- 1.
This study successfully manufactured artificial stone slabs from a SiO2 waste crucible, quartz sand and a UPR. At a compaction time of 3 min, a curing time of
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
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