Recycling of Malaysia's electric arc furnace (EAF) slag waste into heavy-duty green ceramic tile

Recently, various solid wastes from industry such as glass waste, fly ash, sewage sludge and slag have been recycled into various value-added products such as ceramic tile. The conventional solutions of dumping the wastes in landfills or incineration, including in Malaysia are getting obsolete as the annual huge amount of the solid wastes would boost-up disposal cost and may cause permanent damage to the flora and fauna. This recent waste recycling approach is much better and greener as it can resolve problems associated with over-limit storage of industrial wastes and reduce exploration of natural resources for ceramic tile to continuously sustain the nature. Therefore, in this project, an attempt was made to recycle electric arc furnace (EAF) slag waste, obtained from Malaysia's steel making industry, into ceramic tile via conventional powder compaction method. The research work was divided into two stages. The first stage was to evaluate the suitability of EAF slag in ceramic tile by varying weight percentage of EAF slag (40 wt.%, 50 wt.% and 60 wt.%) and ball clay (40 wt.%, 50 wt.% and 60 wt.%), with no addition of silica and potash feldspar. In the second stage, the weight percentage of EAF slag was fixed at 40 wt.% and the percentage of ball clay (30 wt.% and 40 wt.%), feldspar (10 wt.% and 20 wt.%) and silica (10 wt.% and 20 wt.%) added was varied accordingly. Results obtained show that as weight percentage of EAF slag increased up to 60 wt.%, the percentage of apparent porosity and water absorption also rose, with a reduction in tile flexural strength and increased porosity. On the other hand, limiting the weight percentage of EAF slag to 40 wt.% while increasing the weight percentage of ball clay led to a higher total percentage of anorthite and wollastonite minerals, resulting in higher flexural strength. It was found that introduction of silica and feldspar further improved the flexural strength due to optimization of densification process. The highest flexural strength, lowest apparent porosity and water absorption of EAF slag based tile was attained at the composition of 40 wt.% EAF slag--30 wt.% ball clay--10 wt.% feldspar--20 wt.% silica. The properties of ceramic tile made with EAF slag waste (up to 40 wt.%), especially flexural strength are comparable to those of commercial ceramic tile and are, therefore, suitable as high flexural strength and heavy-duty green ceramic floor tile. Continuous development is currently underway to improve the properties of tile so that this recycling approach could be one of the potential effective, efficient and sustainable solutions in sustaining our nature.