Development of ceramic floor tiles made from ferric oxide sourced as steel industrial waste

Abstract

The goal of this research was to develop ceramic floor tiles made from ferric oxide sourced as an industrial steel waste. Traditional ceramic tiles are made from clay, feldspar, kaolin and sand. These materials are known to deplete over time due to the increasing demand of construction materials such as ceramic floor tiles. Ferric oxide produced from steel industries as waste was used as an alternative to feldspar. The physical and mechanical qualities of fired products were examined. In addition, a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and an X-ray diffractometer (XRD) were used to analyze the microstructure and phase. Furthermore, design expert software was utilized to optimize the attributes of fired products, and the results were compared to experimental data. The results revealed that the samples containing 15 wt % ferric oxide, 15 wt % feldspar, 20 wt % ball clay, 40 wt % kaolin and 10 wt % sand exhibited the highest flexural strength of 45.3 ± 2.2 MPa (experimental value). The optimized value of the samples containing 15 wt % ferric oxide, 15 wt % feldspar, 20 wt % ball clay, 40 wt % kaolin and 10 wt % sand for flexural strength was 41.6 ± 2.08 MPa (model value). The high flexural strength was attributed to the formation of mullite fibres as corroborated by XRD diffractograms. In addition, the same composition exhibited the lowest water absorption of 9.62 ± 0.481 % (experiment value) and 10.69 ± 0.53 % (model value). This was attributed to the microstructure of the fired products as reported by the SEM micrographs. Therefore, the ceramic tiles developed satisfied ISO 13006 standard, and they can be classified as group BIa or BIIb simply because their flexural strength was ≥ 35MPa and water absorption was in a range of 6-10 %.