A new method for creating ceramics has been invented in Russia. It consists of utilizing waste from coal-fired thermal power plants. This was reported by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation.
Scientists took ash from the Reftinskaya GRES in the Sverdlovsk region as a material.
The method is based on a two-stage firing of ash to obtain first silicon carbide (SiC) powder and then ceramics by spark plasma sintering.
In the first stage, scientists dissolved 85% of the aluminum in the ash in a mixture of sulfuric acid and ammonium bisulfate. The resulting mass was heated above the boiling point in an autoclave. The residue after filtration served as the starting material for firing.
In the second stage, the ash was mixed with carbon, placed in a furnace (spark plasma sintering method) and silicon carbide was obtained. Next, silicon carbide powder was used to create experimental ceramic samples.
The production of ceramics is one of the stages of complex ash processing, where, in addition to silicon carbide, samples of coagulants, that is, chemical reagents for water treatment and metallurgical alumina, which is used to produce metallic aluminum by electrolysis, have already been obtained.
The study showed that the resulting ceramic samples are not inferior in strength and hardness to industrial analogues. The developers plan to scale the technology at a pilot plant.
Earlier www1.ru reported that the Ural universities will develop technical ceramics for Rusatom MetalTech.
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