People want to live in a cleaner environment and more developed living conditions. Various harmful substances such as toxic materials, gas, dust and dirt come into being from the daily life of people. These substances pollute air, water, soil, etc. and destroy ecological environment, thus doing direct or indirect harm to people.
As an acidic igneous rock containing quartz, feldspars and mica as essential minerals, granite is widely used for decoration of the outer walls of buildings. However, during the processing of granite, granite waste in which 30% is dust is generated. This waste is used as construction filler for building materials, but most of it is left in the open air or landfilled. Consequently, soil, underground water and source of stream are polluted and the concentration of dust in the air is increased. Especially, the particle size of fine granite dust (FGD) is so small that exerts severe harmful influence on the environment.
Recycling of this FGD into eco-friendly material can be very profitable to the economy as well as environment protection.
Ri Chol Ju, a researcher at the Faculty of Earth Science and Technology, has proposed a method of synthesizing zeolite from waste granite powder with low energy (fusing at the temperature of 800℃) and at low cost (using an effective solvent-sodium carbonate).
The results showed that 13X zeolite can be successfully synthesized through pretreatment at the relatively low temperature from what is manufactured by separating chemically stable quartz from FGD.
This method could be applied to all the waste produced from the processing of other rocks containing crystalline quartz.
If you need some more information, please refer to his paper “Hydrothermal synthesis of 13X zeolite by using feldspars separated from waste granite powder” in “International journal of environmental science and technology” (SCI).
© 2021 KumChaek University of Technology