Low Temperature Synthesis of Porous Cordierite from Fly Ash

Abstract

Cordierite is known as three different crystalline forms, such as metastable form (µ- cordierite), high temperature form (α–cordierite; indialite), and low temperature form (β-cordierite). In general, cordierite has a phase transition behavior from metastable form to high temperature form. In this study, we focused to synthesize the porous cordierite at low temperature using reaction method without metastable form. When we used a pure starting powders (Al2O3, MgO, and SiO2), metastable cordierite and Mg spinel phase was obtained during the heat treatment. However, fly ash based mixture used as a starting powder, we obtained a porous α–cordierite at low synthesis temperature through transition from sapphirine/spinel and mullite/spinel