Study on glass-ceramics made from MSWI fly ash, pickling sludge and waste glass by one-step process

Abstract

Municipal solid waste incinerated (MSWI) fly ash and pickling sludge contain heavy metals such as Cr, Pb, Ni, etc., which are harmful to the environment but also suitable to be the nucleating agents in glass-ceramics preparation. In this paper, MSWI fly ash, pickling sludge, and waste glass were melted at 1400 °C for 3 h, and the obtained parent glass was nucleated and crystallized at 800 °C for 0.5 h. Glass-ceramics was successfully prepared by the one-step process. The effects of the content of pickling sludge on crystalline properties of parent glass and the physicochemical properties of glass-ceramics have been systematically discussed. The gap between nucleation temperature (Tn) and crystallization temperature (Tc) can be narrowed with higher content of pickling sludge, which caused fracture of the glass network (Si-O) and generation of the nonbridging oxygen (NBO), promoting the formation of diopside phase. As a result, nucleation and crystallization can be finished at the same temperature, called one-step process. The sample PS22 with 22 wt% pickling sludge added performed the best crystallization ability for having the narrowest gap (ΔT = 177 °C) between Tc and glass transition temperature (Tg) and the highest ratio of NBO to total oxygen (T) (NBO/T = 1.72). The Vickers’ hardness and bending resistance of the products are 13.11 GPa and 135.84 MPa, respectively. The glass-ceramics are composed of homogeneously distributed diopside, donathite-spinel and glass phase. The toxic heavy metals are effectively stabilized by glass-ceramics. This study provides insights into more efficient and cleaner utilization of MSWI fly ash, pickling sludge and waste glass as glass-ceramic materials.