Recycling in ceramic glazes of zirconia overspray from thermal barrier coatings manufacturing

Glazed ceramic tiles are the most common building material for floor and wall covering. Glazes are produced from frits. The aim of this work is to make a total or partial replacement of a raw material, zircon, widely used in ceramic tiles manufacturing, with a waste material, in order to prepare ceramic frits. The waste material used in this work, is the overspray zirconia, which is produced during the deposition process by atmospheric plasma spraying (APS) of thermal barrier coatings (TBC) on turbine blades. In particular, a replacement of 100 wt%, 1 wt% and 0.2 wt% of zirconium silicate with zirconia has been studied. Ceramic glazes prepared mixing frits and other raw materials are applied on a single-fired tile. The glazes obtained were characterized with different analytical techniques. This study has revealed that the substitution of zircon with waste zirconia is possible in small percentages due to the presence of small amount of chromophore ions in the overspray zirconia, which tend to colour the glaze.