Development of high strength porous tile by recycling of waste glass fiber reinforced plastics

Recently, recycling of the waste plastics has strongly been desired. Particularly, recycling of the waste glass fiber reinforced plastics (GFRP) is technically difficult and they cause heavy damage on our environment. The establishment of the recycling technology for the waste GFRP is urgently necessary. In this study, by mixing the clay and the waste GFRP and sintering the mixture, the development of the high strength porous tile was attempted. First, by changing the mixing ratio of the waste GFRP, several kinds of tile specimens were produced, and the microstructure of each specimen was observed using the SEM and the microscope. Next, the bending strength and water absorption of the specimens were examined in detail. From those results, it was confirmed that our proposed glass fiber reinforced porous tile had the high strength and that the glass fibers could be recycled effectively as the reinforced material.