Development and Characterization of Composites filled with Coal Mine Overburden Material and other Industrial Wastes

Abstract

Industrialisation involves large scale use of natural resources- coal, iron, bauxite, etc. The current technology though highly advanced, yet have limited scope to use all the earth resources. Thus, it often produces huge amount of waste- undesirable by-products of those earth materials. Those by-products many a times adversely affect the environment as well as sustainable development. Coal mine overburden, fly ash and red mud are some of those prominent by-products. There exist many attempts to enhance the usage of those, often in developing new composite products. Although a lot of work exists on particulate filled composites, reports on the use of industrial or mining wastes as particulate fillers are rare. Only a few studies on use of wastes like red mud, fly ash, copper slag etc. in polymer composites have been reported so far. However, owing to the high cost of conventional fillers, this is emerging as a subject of extensive research in recent years. In view of this, the present work is undertaken which includes development of a new class of composites using coal mine overburden material of mining sites and some other industrial wastes like red mud and fly ash. This investigation is an attempt to develop different polymer composites using coal mine overburden material along with red mud and fly ash as potential filler ingredients. These particulate fillers in epoxy exhibit impressive compatibility among constituent materials. Incorporation of coal mine overburden material has resulted in substantial improvement in the wear resistance of epoxy resin. Dry sliding wear characteristics of these composites have been successfully analysed using Taguchi experimental design. The analysis reveals that overburden material content and the sliding velocity are the most predominant control factors affecting the wear rates of the composites. The results also show overburden material percentages have direct bearing on the compressive strength as well as the wear resistance and inverse relation with the tensile strength. The developed composite materials have potential to be used in multiple applications as sliding doors, mine headings, replacement of brattice cloth, etc.