Fabrication of porous anorthite-based ceramics using solid wastes for costeffective thermal insulation of buildings

Abstract

There is a global tendency to reduce the consumption of energy required for heating as well as cooling buildings. Therefore, thermal insulation technology becoming important in preventing both, the gain and loss of heat through the building envelope. This work aims to evaluate the feasibility of using inexpensive raw materials such as kaolin and waste material such as seashells and banana peel for fabrication of the sustainable anorthite-based porous ceramics for thermal insulation. Kaolin was used as a source of Al2O3 and SiO2, seashells as a source of CaO whereas banana peel was used as a pore former. The phase composition, bulk density, open porosity, compressive strength, microstructure, and thermal conductivity of the ceramic samples, were analyzed. The obtained results showed that the variation of pore former (banana peel) content and sintering temperature was an effective way to control the thermo-mechanical properties of the obtained anorthite ceramics. Samples with open porosity (1.4 – 45%), compressive strength (>15 MPa), bulk density (1.87-2.62 g/cm3 ), and thermal conductivity (0.097-3.67W/mK) were obtained after sintering of samples with different percent of banana peel at 1100–1200 ◦C. It suggests that the obtained porous ceramics can be used for cost-effective thermal insulation of buildings.