Raw material and composition of U-shaped glass
In today's field of building materials, the application of U-shaped glass is becoming more and more extensive. Compared with traditional ordinary glass, U-shaped glass has the characteristics of light transmission, beautiful appearance, and higher strength. So what raw materials are needed to produce U-shaped glass? What are the functions of these raw materials? Let me introduce them one by one.
1. Basic ingredients
Like most ordinary glass, the basic chemical composition of U-shaped glass also contains four elements: silicon dioxide, sodium oxide, calcium oxide and magnesium oxide.
Silica is the main component of glass. It is derived from quartz sand and has very good durability, but its melting point is too high. It is very difficult to make glass from silica alone.
So people add sodium oxide, which can effectively reduce the melting point of quartz sand, that is, the raw material of silica, but at the same time, because of the presence of sodium ions, it has high chemical activity and is easy to react with the outside world. In industrial materials, soda ash can provide a large amount of sodium oxide.
Calcium oxide is another important constituent element, which has the function of enhancing the durability of glass. The disadvantage is that it is easy to cause crystallization of liquid raw materials at high temperature, so that the glass will lose its light transmission. Limestone and dolomite contain large amounts of calcium oxide.
In order to solve this problem, magnesium oxide is often added to the raw materials to prevent crystallization of the glass at high temperatures. Dolomite can provide a large amount of magnesium oxide.
The above four elements are the basic components of most glass, and the glass produced is also known as soda-lime-silica glass.
2. Minor ingredients
In addition to the basic elements mentioned above, U-shaped glass will also add some auxiliary materials as needed. The most commonly used is alumina, which is used to effectively increase the moisture resistance of glass. Furthermore, when producing plain white U-shaped glass, adding iron red powder can effectively remove the bubbles formed by carbon dioxide in the raw material, making the glass more clear. However, iron red powder causes glass coloring, so it cannot be used in ultra-clear U-shaped glass raw materials.
Adding some oxidizing agents can make the glass more crystal clear. If there are special needs, you can also add an appropriate amount of colorants to change the color of the glass, such as cobalt, selenium, nickel and so on.
3. Clarifying agent
In industrial production, it is also necessary to add a certain amount of Glauber's salt to the glass raw material as a clarifying agent, which can effectively discharge gases such as carbon dioxide contained in the liquid glass and make the glass more clear.
4. Broken glass
The purpose of adding cullet to the raw material is to effectively lower the melting point of the raw material, making the raw material easier to process.
In this way, according to the needs, the above-mentioned four types of raw materials are weighed and mixed according to different proportions, and sent to the furnace. After product molding, annealing, cooling, and cutting, the final U-shaped glass can be obtained.
In the industry, some deep processing can also be carried out on U-shaped glass, such as tempering, sandblasting, high-temperature colored glaze, etc., to achieve the desired effect.
