Physical and Mechanical Properties of Aluminum Dross

Abstract

The study on the physio-mechanical behavior of aluminum dross has been carried out. The amount of aluminum dross used varied between 50 and 90 wt %, while bentonite added to the dross varied from 10- 50 wt % with a fixed amount of water. Using dross particle sizes of 106 µm and 184 µm, 10 samples are produced from each particle size. The bricks are dried in still air for 24hrs at 31oC, oven drying at 110ºC for 24hrs and sintered at 450ºC for 8hrs. The bricks characteristics in terms of volume shrinkage, apparent porosity, bulk density, cold crush strengths and permeability are then evaluated. The results show that the 106µm particle size dross brick has the highest volume shrinkage of 24%, apparent porosity of 15% and peak bulk density of 1.9g/c.c. However, the dross brick exhibits relatively low cold crush strength of 940KN/m². The 106µm size bricks demonstrate a minimum of 85% permeability compared with 70 wt% of 184 µm bricks which may be due to variation in dross particles agglomeration. Given these results, the 106µm particle size brick can serve as acid refractory because its properties compared well with medium-alumina fireclay.