Nano-porous pottery using calcined waste sediment from tap water production as an additive

Abstract

A suspension of sediment from a lagoon in a tap water production plant was collected for this experiment. The suspension was spray dried and calcined at 700 °C for 1 h. After calcining, 30 wt.% of the sediment were mixed with pottery clay. Samples with and without calcined sediment were sintered at 900, 1000 and 1100 °C. The results show that calcined sediment can be used as an additive in pottery clay. The samples with calcined sediment show higher porosity, water absorption and flexural strength, especially for 900 and 1000 °C. At 900 °C, samples with calcined sediment show a porosity of 50% with an average pore size of 68 nm, water absorption of 31% and flexural strength of 12.61 MPa.