Preparation and performance of Ce-doped far-infrared radiation ceramics by single iron ore tailings

Abstract

Waste fine-grained tailings can be utilized as a secondary resource to prepare high value-added products. The purpose of this study is to investigate the feasibility of using fine-grained iron ore tailings from the mining industry for the preparation of far-infrared ceramic materials. Far-infrared ceramics are widely used in the field of solar thermal storage because of the high solar absorption rate and excellent thermal shock resistance. In this work, a kind of Ce-doped far-infrared radiation ceramics were successfully synthesized using solid waste iron ore tailings (IOT) as raw materials. After the detailed investigations of the infrared absorption and emission properties of Ce-doped IOT ceramics, the results showed that the highest far-infrared emissivity of 0.942 in the wavelength of 8–14 μm was achieved when the doping amount was 9 wt%. A small amount of Ce4+ dissolved in diopside-ferrian and promoted the transition from Fe2+ to Fe3+, causing variations in grain size and chemical bonds vibration intensity of diopside-ferrian, which ultimately led to variations in lattice distortion. The extent of lattice distortion is proportional to the far-infrared emissivity of ceramics. Such Ce-doped IOT ceramics with excellent far-infrared emission capability and thermal shock resistance have broad development prospects in the field of energy conservation, especially in solar thermal storage.