Physical, chemical and mineralogical properties of fly ash and bottom ash

The purpose of this study is to investigate the physical, chemical and mineralogical properties of fly ash and bottom ash taken from the Stesen Janakuasa Elektrik Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah, Kapar, Selangor. The unused fly ash and bottom ash is one of the major problems of all combustion power plants in Malaysia and it brings significant problems to the environment such as the air pollution and groundwater contamination. This research has identified certain suitable features that exist in fly ash and bottom ash that will enhance the potential of application in the industries. The equipments used in this research were X-ray Fluorescence which to analyse chemical composition of the ashes, X-ray Diffraction to analyse mineralogical characteristics and Particle Size Analyzer to identify particle size distribution. Both fly ash and bottom ash has similar composition. However the slight differences in composition is what makes these two ashes differ from each other. Fly ash and bottom ash consist mostly of silicon dioxide. However bottom ash has more amount of magnesium oxide compared to fly ash. X-ray diffraction shows that both sample has high intensity of crystallinity structure. Size distribution results shown that 50% of the diameter particles in the fly ash are larger than 26.227 μm meanwhile the other 50% smaller than 26.227 μm. Meanwhile 10% of the bottom ash has diameter less than 18.078 μm and 90% of it has diameter less than 161.071 μm.