A Statistical Approach for Green Conversion of the Amorphous E-waste into Glassy Refractory Mortar Subjected to High Temperature

The characteristics of vast dune sands in southern Algeria create the potential for exploitation in high-temperature resistance performances for refractory mortar manufacturing used in building construction. The refractory mortar examined in this work incorporates amounts of fine addition of liquid crystal display glass electronic waste (DGE-waste) in order to optimize the thermophysical and mechanical performance of the mortar and correct the granular distribution of the used sand. The aim of this paper is to study new refractory mortar products containing DGE-waste to reduce the demand for conventional mortars while providing a new sustainable waste management solution. The dune sand was partially substituted (0 %, 5 %, 10 %, 15 %, and 20 % in weight) with DGE-waste powder with a w/c ratio of 0.6. The DGE-waste powder and four of the five samples were analyzed using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). The thermophysical properties, such as thermal conductivity, were experimentally measured in dry states. These properties were determined as a function of the DGE-waste powder percentage using a high-temperature oven at different temperatures (200 °C, 400 °C, 600 °C, and 800 °C), whose mechanical behavior at high temperatures has not been extensively studied. We statistically analyzed the obtained data using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with a level of significance of 0.05. The results confirm that increasing the replacement levels of additions of DGE-waste significantly improves the thermo-physical and thermo-mechanical properties of dune sand-based mortar. As a result, the results show that thermal conductivity decreases with increasing temperature and/or decreased replacement rate. Therefore, the incorporation of DGE-waste powder can significantly affect the thermophysical and thermomechanical properties as compared with the control mortar. The results revealed that a more reasonable way to find refractory dune sand mortar is by incorporating DGE-waste.