Sustainable ceramics for gamma-ray protection applications, employing inexpensive natural clay and recycled glass waste

Abstract

The current study aims to utilize the recycled waste glass powder and natural clay to develop a novel, cost-effective ceramic material suitable for γ-ray shielding applications. The ceramic composites were fabricated according to the chemical formula of (85-y) clay + 15 wt% boric acid (H₃BO₃) + y glass waste, where y = 0, 10, 15, 20, 35, and 50 wt%. The impact of partially substituting of glass waste for the natural clay on the structural and γ-ray shielding properties is investigated experimentally. The minerals that mainly constitute the synthesized ceramics were determined using the X-ray diffractometer. Thereafter, the changes in the functional groups within the prepared material, resulting from increasing the glass waste concentration, were evaluated using the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Additionally, the addition of the glass waste to the fabricated ceramics samples increases their porosity, pore volume, and water absorption factor, while their density decreases, as determined by the experimental measurements. Furthermore, the experimental measurements for the shielding properties using the NaI (Tl) detector show that the increase in recycled glass waste dopant concentration from 0 to 50 wt% decreases the linear attenuation coefficient from 0.552 cm⁻¹ to 0.504 cm⁻¹. The fall in the linear attenuation coefficient leads to a decline in the radiation protection efficacy of 10 cm thickness of the manufactured ceramics from 71.39 % to 69.85 % as the concentration of recycled glass trash increases from 0 to 50 wt% at 0.662 MeV.