Glass Ceramics Composites Fabricated from Coal Fly Ash and Waste Glass

Great quantities of coal ash are produced in thermal power plants which present a double problem to the society: economical and environmental. This waste is a result of burning of coal at temperatures between 1100-14500C. Fly ash available as fine powder presents a source of important oxides SiO2, Al2O3, Fe2O3, MgO, Na2O, but also consist of small amount of ecologically hazardous oxides such as Cr2O3, NiO, MnO. The combination of the fly ash with waste glass under controlled sintering procedure gave bulk glass-ceramics composite material. The principle of this procedure is presented as a multi barrier concept (1). Many researches have been conducted the investigations for utilization of fly ash as starting material for various glass–ceramics production (2-4). Using waste glass ecologically hazardous components are fixed at the molecular level in the silicate phase and the fabricated new glass-ceramic composites possess significantly higher mechanical properties. The aim of this investigation was to fabricate dense glass ceramic composites using fly ash and waste glass with the potential for its utilization as building material