Synthesis and Characterization of Zeolite from Glass by Hydrothermal Processing

Zeolite is a microporous aluminosilicate material with uniform pore size of less than 2 nm and chemical, mechanical, and thermal stability. In general zeolite is synthesized from silica, alumina, mineralizer (alkali metal hydroxide and fluoride) and water. Recently it has been reported that various zeolites is synthesized from soda-lime glass, slag and coal fly ash as silica and alumina source. On the other hand, the production volume of various kinds of high-quality glass which are utilized for high-tech products such as liquid crystal displays and plasma displays is rapidly increasing. The purpose in this study is to synthesize a zeolite from crushed aluminoborosilicate glasses which is used as LCD panels glass substrate. According to the XRD analysis, it was found that the synthesized sample had zeolite related structure. And the results of SEM observation of the products suggest that the zeolite structure was obtained as well as XRD results. It was thought that zeolite was successfully synthesized from the glass by this synthetic processing.