Foaming Glass Using High Pressure Sintering

Foam glass is a high added value product which contributes to waste recycling and energy efficiency through heat insulation. The foaming can be initiated by a chemical or physical process. Chemical foaming with aid of a foaming agent is the dominant industrial process. Physical foaming has two variations. One way is by saturation of glass melts with gas. The other involves sintering of powdered glass under a high gas pressure resulting in glass pellets with high pressure bubbles entrapped. Reheating the glass pellets above the glass transition temperature under ambient pressure allows the bubbles to expand. After heat-treatment foam glass can be obtained with porosities of 80–90 %. In this study we conduct physical foaming of cathode ray tube (CRT) panel glass by sintering under high pressure (5-25 MPa) using helium, nitrogen, or argon at 640 °C (~108 Pa s). Reheating a sample in a heating microscope above maximum foaming temperature gives a suitable foaming temperature for the remaining samples. We show that the foaming kinetics depend on the type of gas and the pressure. A critical pressure of around 20 MPa is found to give the largest expansion for all gasses. Samples are obtained with 100 % closed porosity for argon and nitrogen samples (5-20 MPa) and for helium samples (5-15 MPa). The pore structure of the samples is analysed to understand the critical pressure.