The Use of Waste Borosilicate Glasses for Formulating a Functional Transparent Glaze

Abstract

Glaze making in some developing countries has not been encouraging, therefore making the act of glazing going into extinct. This setback is due to unavailability of required fluxes for formulating a workable low temperature transparent glaze. Meanwhile glass of different properties like Grade B borosilicate and Grade A borosilicate glasses which contain the required silica/flux ratio for formulating a low temperature transparent glazes are found to be abundantly available as waste, which are discarded and therefore polluting the immediate environment. This paper therefore discuss the availability and utilization of this particular type of waste glasses for formulating transparent glazes by processing and sieving the waste glasses into its finest particle called cullet. This processed cullet was used as a source of flux/silica with kaolin supplying the alumina for stabilizing the glaze. Cullet was composed in several proportions with kaolin in ratio 1-10 and vice versa. The composed glazes were fired at different temperature and atmosphere to detect the best condition at which cullet can be utilized as a source of silica/flux in formulating a transparent glaze.