High insulation foam glass material from waste cathode ray tube panel glass

Recycling of materials from obsolete equipment has become an important part of global waste management. With responsible collecting, dismantling and materials separation, majority of materials can be recycled. Cathode ray tube (CRT) glass represents as much as two-thirds of the weight of a TV. In general CRT consists of two types of glasses: barium/strontium containing glass (panel glass) and lead containing glass (funnel and panel glass). In this work we present the possibility to produce high performance insulation material from the recycled lead-free glass. We studied the influence of foaming parameters on the characteristics of foamed glass.CRT panel glass was crushed, milled and sieved below 63 m. Activated carbon used as a foaming agent and MnO2 as an ‘oxidizing’ agent were mixed with glass powders by means of a planetary ball mill. Foaming effect was observed in the temperature range between 750 and 850°C. We investigated the influence of milling time, particle size, foaming and oxidizing agent concentrations, temperature and time on the foaming process, foam density, foam porosity and homogeneity. Only moderate foaming was observed in carbon containing samples, while the addition of the oxidizing agent greatly improved the foaming quality. The results showed that the amount of oxygen available from the glass is not sufficient to combust all of the added carbon, therefore, additional oxygen was supplied via manganese reduction. In general, a minimum in the foam glass density was observed when the foaming parameters were changed. Finally we were able to reduce the density of the obtained foam glass down to 130 kg/m3 and hence the thermal conductivity down to 0.042 W/m•K.