v7px

Sani Garba Durumin-iya, Suleiman Bashir Adamu, Ibrahim Garba Shittu, Abdullahi Mikail and Lawan Musa Yelwa

Keywords: Rice Husk Ash (RHA), Porcelain, Quartz, XRD, XRF and SEM

Abstract
In South-East Asia and some part of Sub-Sahara region in Africa and Nigeria, rice industries are one of the most important agricultural industries. In Thailand it is estimated that the total waste generated by rice industries was around 10 million tons in one year. Rice Husk Ash (RHA) was collected from local farmers and heated with furnace at 800°C for 24 hours. The ash was treated with HCl acid to enhance the purity and remove unwanted materials. To maintain triaxial porcelain structure, 50 wt. % clay, 25 wt. % feldspar and 25 wt. % quartz was used. Quartz was replaced with treated RHA and mixed homogeneously in a Labkorean Ball Mill machine (model RS-1S) for 12 hours at a speed of 250 revolutions per minute. The mixed powder was dry pressed into pallets at mould pressure of 91 MPa and sintered at a temperature of 1050 °C, 1100 °C and 1150 °C for 2 hours soaking time, at heating rate of 5 °C per minute using electric furnace (Protherm Furnace PLF 130/15). The highest value of compressive strength was determined to be 490 MPa, X-ray Fluorescence Machine (XRF) revealed that, RHA has similar chemical composition with quartz with SiO2 as dominant composition which was further confirmed by the structural analysis through X-ray Diffraction Analysis (XRD). The bulk density was reported to have maximum value at 1100 °C sintering temperature as 2.45g/cm3.