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Firing behaviour of ceramic whiteware bodies incorporated with local feldspathic sources
Radzali Othman1, Mahizar Mohamad2.
Quarry dust is a by-product of granite quarrying activities. Granite fragments, that are
normally obtained from blasting granite rocks in a particular quarry, are subjected to a
number of machineries of decreasing crushing aperture sizes and each attendant sieving
to obtain granite aggregates of the desired size, normally 20 mm, 10 mm, etc. These are
to be used in the construction of buildings as coarse aggregates in concrete mixes, as well
as in the laying of tarred roads. The finest fraction, nominally below 7 mm or 5 mm in size
depending on the practice of the quarrying company, is normally dumped on site. It is
considered to be a waste that needs to be disposed of. Apart from attending to the
environmental issue, the reuse of such waste material in the development of new products
would be an attractive commercial proposition. In this work, granite quarry dust was
incorporated into a clay-based ceramic body to replace the use of feldspar (an expensive
component) as the fluxing agent in such triaxial clay whiteware compositions. A fluxing
agent is the component in a ceramic body composition that melts first and functions as
the component that binds together all the other solid particles into a rigid body. Initially,
the quarry dust was chemically and mineralogically characterized before mixing with clay
at a fixed 45:55 weight ratio. The mixtures were then pressed and fired at various
temperatures before testing the properties of the fired products. A comparison was made
with a local feldspathic source from Gua Musang to ascertain the feasibility of such
replacement to produce high quality ceramic bodies. It was found that mineralogically
the granite quarry dust consists of K-feldspar (or orthoclase) as compared to Na-feldspar
(or albite) found in the Gua Musang feldspar. This led to melting at a lower temperature of
the former but exhibited a much more viscous melt. At the same time, the higher iron
content in the granite quarry dust led to a much darker colourisation of the body upon
firing. In conclusion, the granite quarry dust has been found to be successful in lowering
the maturing temperature of ceramic bodies compared to the Gua Musang feldspar
beside conferring stability of the low porosity property over a wider firing temperature.
Affiliation:
- Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Malaysia
- Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Malaysia
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Indexation |
Indexed by |
MyJurnal (2021) |
H-Index
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6 |
Immediacy Index
|
0.000 |
Rank |
0 |
Indexed by |
Scopus 2020 |
Impact Factor
|
CiteScore (1.4) |
Rank |
Q3 (Engineering (all)) |
Additional Information |
SJR (0.191) |
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