Preparation of glass-ceramic materials using kaolin and oil well drilling wastes

The high production of drill cuttings during oil well drilling operations is one of the main causes of the huge amount of waste created by the oil industry. Meanwhile, large amount of kaolin waste is produced during the kaolin mining processes. These wastes are usually deposited in landfills with no specific use. Thus, recycling of solid wastes by their incorporation in ceramics has been considered an attractive way to obtain high added value technical solutions, enhancing the culture of reuse. Glass-ceramics have been receiving this same approach with the advantage of obtaining a high-performance product from recycled raw materials. The current study proposes the synthesis of glass-ceramics of the SiO 2 -Al 2 O 3 -CaO-Na 2 O-K 2 O-MgO system from a mixture of kaolin and oil well drilling wastes. A mixture of the recycled raw materials (wastes) and Na 2 CO 3 (a commercial material used to adjust the glass composition) was melted at 1500 °C for 1 h to obtain a glass-ceramic precursor material. The resulting vitreous powder was studied by thermal, chemical and structural characterization techniques, pressed into pellets and further sintered at 850 °C. The microstructural analysis of the obtained glass-ceramics showed the attainment of dendritic-like crystals combined with an amorphous phase.