Value-added utilization of coal fly ash in polymeric composite decking boards

The value-added utilization of coal fly ash (CFA) remains a major challenge worldwide, as tens of millions of tons CFA are stockpiled or landfilled per year in China along, leading to a waste of resources and environmental pollution. Herein, a facile, environmentally friendly, and value-added strategy of combining modified CFA with polyvinyl chloride (PVC) to form CFA/PVC composites, was adopted to effectively solve the problems caused by the utili-zation of coal resources. In this process, the composites were prepared by hot-mixing CFA with aluminate coupling agent, PVC and additives, followed by extrusion, cooling, shaping, traction, and cutting. The resulting material with excellent mechanical properties (static bending strength, tensile strength, and hardness are 34.9 MPa, 17.1 MPa, and HRR 103, respectively) was successfully utilized as the CFA-plastic composites decking boards (CFA/ PVC composites). Compared with the conventional materials for this use, our material exhibited comparable performance but is more attractive from both environmental and economical point of view. More importantly, this strategy reduces the cost for production of decking boards by 10-20%, as the process is rather simple and robust, it was industrialized. (c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

A value-added strategy of combining modified coal fly ash (CFA) with polyvinyl chloride (PVC) was adopted to produce CFA/PVC composites, which exhibited excellent mechanical properties and were successfully utilized for decking boards. This strategy not only solves the problems caused by coal resources utilization but also provides environmental and economic advantages.