Effect of soil particle size and types on the crystallization behavior for nuclear waste disposal

To investigate the crystallization behavior in the field of radioactive contaminated soil immobilization, different particle size soils are heated at 1300 °C within 30 min by microwave sintering. The XRD results show that mullite phase appears in the yellow soil when the particle size is over 150 mesh. The behavior of crystallization is also related to the grain size and aluminum–silicon molar ratio. As the particle size increases, the crystallinity values generally decrease in all sintered soils. When the particle size is fixed, the crystallinity values are lowest in yellow sintered soil and highest in black sintered soil.