Cast Glass Components out of Recycled Glass: Potential and Limitations of Upgrading Waste to Load-bearing Structures

Although in theory glass can be endlessly remelted without loss in quality, in practice only a small percentage gets recycled, mainly by the packaging industry. Most of the discarded glass fails to pass the high quality standards of the prevailing glass industry -due to coatings, adhesives, other contaminants or incompatibility of the recipe-...

The effect of manufacturing flaws in the meso-structure of cast glass on the structural performance

The success of projects such as the Crystal Houses façade in Amsterdam has triggered an increasing interest from architects, engineers and glass producers in the development and application of structural cast glass components. This interest raises, simultaneously, the needs for a controlled manufacturing process, a system for quality control and...

Innovative Glass Recipes Containing Industrial Waste Materials

The growth of the industrial production generates a high volume of waste materials. These products have a significant impact on the environment. Therefore, the valorization of industrial wastes, especially those produced in huge quantities, is an important social and ecological issue. Waste reuse and recycling could help to develop new...

The Application of Waste Float Glass, Recycled in Structural Beams made with the Glass Casting Method

It is not obvious to talk about glass recycling when we realize that a mature recycling procedure for glass bottles is already working well. However, apart from glass bottles, unfortunately, that a large amount of glass will disappear into landfills. This large quantity of unrecycled glass indicates that there is a large potential in upgrading...

Investigating the flexural strength of recycled cast glass

Currently, tons of high quality commercial glass are down-cycled or landfilled due to contaminants that prevent close-loop recycling. Yet, this glass is potentially a valuable resource for casting robust and aesthetically unique building components. Exploring the potential of this idea, different types of non-recyclable silicate glasses are...

New phosphate glasses containing industrial waste and their applications for building engineering

Despite a large number of products developed from waste materials, most of them consist of non-transparent applications, partly because it is a challenge to get transparent materials at reasonable temperatures from these waste products. In this work, we produced transparent glass samples incorporating slag and fly ash into a phosphate glass...

Structural cast glass components manufactured from waste glass: Diverting everyday discarded glass from the landfill to the building industry

Although in theory glass can be endlessly re-melted without loss in quality, in practice only a small percentage gets recycled, mainly by the packaging industry. Most of the discarded glass fails to pass the high quality standards of the prevailing glass industry – due to coatings, adhesives, other contaminants or incompatibility of the recipe –...

Re^3 glass a reduce/reuse/recycle strategy

The applicability of glass in structures is continuously ascending, as the transparency and high compressive strength of the material render it the optimum choice for realizing diaphanous structural components that allow for light transmittance and space continuity. The fabrication boundaries of the material are constantly stretching: visible...