Investigation on characteristic properties of potassium borate and sodium borate blended perlite bricks

The aim of this study is investigation of brick reproducibility using expanded perlite aggregate as the main raw material. Na-Borate and K-Borate are used as additive material in the production of perlite bricks. Engineering parameters such as weight per unit of volume, mechanical strength of produced control brick (with a dimension of 50 × 100 × 100 mm) were determined and optimized. As a result of the study, the lowest value of weight per unit of volume and the highest value of strength were ascertained as 522 kg/m3 and 23 kg/cm2 for the samples which were produced at a 50 bar pressure and 400 °C with 1 h burning period and a water to binder ratio of 0.90. Also, denser volume was observed in the microstructure investigation by addition of Na-Borate and K-Borate to perlite brick mixtures.