Waste products such as industrial slag and post-consumer and industrial waste glass are an increasing problem in today's society. Although methods of recycling such materials are known in the art, such methods are often not economically feasible. Typical recycling methods include high temperature processing wherein the waste glass or slag is utilized as a raw material where it is ground or milled to fine particle size and added to the other materials to produce fresh glass, melted, homogenized with the other ingredients and shaped by standard equipment in the industry to produce glass products.
Previously, waste glass and slag have been used together with sand or other mineral products, and the combination heat treated in various ways to produce construction materials such as tiles or slabs for use as floors or wall coverings of buildings.
However, previous methods for producing such tiles from slag or waste glass have suffered from several problems. First, previous methods require the presence of sand or other mineral components including sandstone, granite, ground brick, ceramic materials such as broken porcelain or mica, in their production. Such materials are expensive and add to the cost of production of the tile. Such added materials are often required to ensure that the resulting tile has the necessary mechanical strength and physical properties to withstand the harsh conditions to which the tile may be exposed.
Additionally, previous methods known in the art have required that the glass and/or slag, together with the sand and/or minerals, be mixed together with additional ingredients used to form the tiles or slabs, such as colorants and/or bonding agents, immediately prior to the materials being placed into a heat-resistant mold and heat treated to form the final tile product. This required expensive processing immediately before the production of the tile and required both processes to be carried out at the same site.
A need exists for a method of processing waste glass or slag into an intermediate industrial precursor product, such that the industrial precursor can be stored for an indefinite period of time and heat treated in any appropriate manner to produce a construction material which is resistant to weathering, corrosion, chemicals and abrasion, while maintaining a defect-free surface such that the finished construction material is of sufficient quality to be used as a replacement for natural and/or artificial construction materials such as marble and granite. Additionally, a need exists for an industrial precursor that can be used to prepare such construction materials that does not call for the presence of costly ingredients such as sand or minerals in its production.