Hollow glass microspheres are spherical particles that can be distinguished into two categories; solid or hollow. Hollow glass microspheres typical ranges from 1 to 200 μm in diameter. Microsphere are made from glass, ceramic, carbon or plastic depending on applications. Solid glass microsphere is manufactured by direct burning of glass powders while hollow glass microspheres is produced by adding blowing agent to glass powder.
This paper presented the production of hollow glass microspheres by using the vertical thermal flame (VTF) process. Pre-treated soda lime glass powder with particle sized range from 90 to 125μm was used in this work. The results showed that hollow glass microspheres produced by two passes through the flame have a more spherical shape as compared with the single pass.
Under the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), it is observed that there is a morphology changed from uneven surface of glass powders to smooth spherical surface particles. Qualitative analysis for density of the preburned and burned particles was performed. Burned particles floats in water while pre-burned particles sank indicated the change of density of the particles. Further improvements of the VTF process in terms of the VTF set-up are required to increase the transformation of glass powders to hollow glass microspheres.
This article comes from iopscience edit released