Preparation and characterization of glass-ceramics with granite tailings and titanium-bearing blast furnace slags

The resource utilization of granite tailings and titanium-bearing blast furnace slags is an emphasis of current research and is widely considered. In this work, by adopting these two slags as raw materials, diopside-based glass-ceramics were synthesized by melting-cooling-monolithic crystallization. The influence of the content of granite tailings, namely, the ratio of (SiO2+Al2O3/CaO+TiO2) on the structure and properties of glass-ceramics was characterized with differential scanning calorimetry, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope, volume density and microhardness. The results suggest that the introduction of granite tailings makes the melting quality of glass deteriorate and the crystallization tendency decrease, the number of microcrystalline in glass-ceramics decreases and the glass phase increases. Moreover, the increase of Si/O ratio is advantageous to the precipitation of wollastonite but not diopside, and the volume density and micmhardness of glass-ceramics decrease with the increase of granite tailings. When the content of granite tailings is 40 wt%, the crystal structure of glass-ceramics is moderate, the volume density and microhardness are 3.0207 g/cm(3) and 8.6 GPa, respectively, which are excellent for architectural decoration.

Automated summary

This study successfully synthesized diopside-based glass-ceramics by using granite tailings and titanium-bearing blast furnace slags as raw materials. The introduction of granite tailings was found to deteriorate the melting quality of glass and decrease the crystallization tendency, leading to a decrease in the number of microcrystals in glass-ceramics and an increase in the glass phase. Furthermore, an increase in the content of granite tailings resulted in a decrease in the volume density and microhardness of glass-ceramics.