Title: Composite tiles from waste plastics and fly-ash: modelling the influence of composition on mechanical and physical properties

Authors: Sampa Chakrabarti; Sayantan Adak; Abhijit Bandyopadhyay

Addresses: Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Calcutta, 92, Acharya P.C. Road, Kolkata, 700009, India ' Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Calcutta, 92, Acharya P.C. Road, Kolkata, 700009, India ' Department of Polymer Science and Technology, University of Calcutta, 92, Acharya P.C. Road, Kolkata, 700009, India

Abstract: Fly-ash is a waste from coal-based thermal power plant. Grocery bags commonly made from polyethylene and packaging foam which is expanded polystyrene are also two types of waste plastics. All these solid wastes pose an environmental threat. In this article, development of composite tiles from these solid wastes and their physico-mechanical characterisation has been described. Mass ratios of polyethylene to fly-ash (A) and polystyrene to fly-ash (B) were correlated with the respective solvent resistances, tensile and flexural strengths of the tiles through simple equations. The agreement of the proposed models and the experimental data was found to be excellent. Indian standard for the common ceramic tiles is compared with the developed ones. The product is found suitable as a wall tile. This may help in sustainable disposal of these bulk solid wastes whose safe disposal is still a huge problem.

Keywords: waste thermocol; polyethylene bag; fly-ash; composite tiles; mechanical strength; solvent absorption; model.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMATEI.2022.122173

International Journal of Materials Engineering Innovation, 2022 Vol.13 No.1, pp.43 - 57

Received: 08 Apr 2021
Accepted: 25 Jun 2021
Published online: 11 Apr 2022 *

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