An ultra-fast non-conventional waste management protocol to recycle of industrial fly ash into zeolite X

Abstract

An ultra-fast non-conventional waste management protocol was being designed and applied to recycle and reuse industrial coal fly ash (CFA) waste to generate highly pure nanozeolite X. Both microwave heating–assisted hydrothermal treatment method and ultrasonic waves–assisted hydrothermal method have been successfully used for the fast valorization of power plant CFA waste, and the results were compared with conversional valorization method for CFA conversion to zeolite. While conventional methods like hydrothermal treatment using sodium hydroxide took up to 4 days in valorization of the solid CFA waste into a useful zeolitic X material; the non-conventional methods using microwave irradiation of frequency 2.45 GHz and ultrasound irradiation of frequency 20 kHz took 90 min and 20 min respectively to fast-valorize the solid waste into highly pure zeolite material with high cation–exchanged capacity. The unconventional techniques, therefore, can be used in the large-scale valorization of solid waste recycling and reuse to yield highly pure zeolite.

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