Aiming at reducing environmental impacts, ceramic industries have worked towards adapting their production methods as well as looking into reusing and recycling their own products. The roof tile industry, despite constant development, still produces large volumes of rejected material, as a consequence of faulty processing, especially during firing. Units depicting signs of overfiring, cracking and distortion, as well as geometry and colour non-uniformities are often discarded with no environmental concern. In addition to that, discarded products have negative economic effects considering the energy, raw materials and working hours used in the fabrication of products that do not go to market. Often, defective roof tiles account for 20% of the monthly production of the ceramic industries. On the other hand, such discarded roof tiles can be reused in the production of new ceramic products, including those with higher added value, such as stoneware tiles. To that end, it is essential to assess the effect of the addition of these ceramic residues in the ceramic mixtures traditionally used to produce stoneware tiles. The present study aimed at investigating the microstructural development of stoneware tile mixtures containing roof tile residues. Contents of 10%, 20% and 30% of residue were added to two different ceramic mixtures. Three firing temperatures were studied, i.e., 1150 ºC, 1200 ºC and 1250 ºC. The heating rate was set to 10 ºC/min. Samples with or without residue were sintered and had their microstructure, water absorption and apparent porosity characterized. The addition of tile roof residue reduced the water absorption of both mixtures studied. By adding 30% residue to mixture 2 and firing at 1250 ºC, it was possible to reduce its water absorption below 0,5%, typical of stoneware tiles. Due to its mineralogical composition, the residue studied can be useful in reducing the large amounts of traditional melting agents, such as feldspar and talc, demanded in the fabrication of stoneware tiles.
stoneware tile; roof tile residue; microstructure
