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Grant Work

American industries generate and dispose million of tons of industrial waste each year. In the U.S. there are approximately 15 companies currently generating ceramic industrial waste that results in tens of thousands of tons of waste produced annually. Much of this waste ends up in municipal landfills. To examine the value of recycled alumina scrap as useful alumina grains and powders, Environmental Abrasives was awarded and completed an Environmental Protection Agency, SBIR, a Phase 1 grant to investigate the performance of its alumina as abrasive grains, fillers for ceramic based adhesives and as plasma sprayable powders.

This project had four major segments:

Produce EA alumina grains and powders from recycled ceramic industrial scrap
Clean and surface profile iron and aluminum based substrates for testing
Coat substrates using thermal spray and adhesive bond processes
Test the samples and controls

The basic approach was to compare test results and production costs for EA alumina coated substrates (samples) to substrates coated from comparable commercial (CC) alumina coatings (controls). Successful completion of these four major segments was to provide data to meet our prime objectives of demonstrating that EA alumina plasma coatings and EA ceramic adhesive coatings cost less than, and have equivalent wear and corrosion protection performance compared to CC alumina plasma coatings and CC ceramic adhesive coatings. An equally acceptable result was to prove that EA alumina plasma coatings and EA ceramic adhesive coatings had similar coating costs and better wear and corrosion protection performance than the controls.