After several years of research and development, the Inorela West company in Finland has taken the lead in the world to research new processes that successfully use recycled waste glass to produce new building materials. On September 20th, a factory that used this latest technology to process "ecological glass veneers" was formally put into operation in Forssa, southwestern Finland.
According to this latest process, recycled beer bottles, wine bottles and other glassware are first crushed and classified by color, and then incorporated into 5% Innomax Company to obtain technically patented additives and adhesives for compression molding and then fed into Baking in an oven at a temperature of 900 degrees Celsius for 12 hours results in sintering into finished products of different shapes and sizes. This new building material has a wide range of uses and can be used as exterior architectural wall surfaces, interior walls and floors, green belt pavements, ships and other decorative materials.
The director of Innomax’s sales department said that this new type of building decoration material will first of all contribute to environmental protection. The annual amount of used glass recovered in Finland is about 40,000 tons. For a long time, a considerable part of the waste glass was dumped at the garbage dump, causing damage to the ecological environment. Now turning waste into treasure through new processes opens up new ways to make full use of recycled glass. Second, this emerging material has a variety of good properties. After repeated tests, the material has good air permeability, resistance to combustion, and high strength. It can withstand cold temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius and a service life of 50 to 100 years. From a long-term perspective, new materials are economical. Thirdly, this new construction and decorative material is well-matched and can be configured with any color products according to users and design needs, and can be cut into any geometric shape with a high-pressure water gun.
At present, the company's products are only used for outdoor decoration, a size of 400 mm × 300 mm, a thickness of 25 mm. The market price per square meter is between 600 and 800 Finnish marks (US$1 or 6.4 Finnish marks) depending on the color requirements. This new type of building material can be comparable to natural marble in terms of both firmness and appearance, and the market price of marble is around 3,000 Finnish marks per square meter. The new glass building material weighs 2,300 kilograms per cubic meter.
This technology won the innovation and invention award last year in the Uxima region of Finland. Currently, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Ireland and other European countries as well as Japan have expressed a keen interest in this new production process, and they have negotiated on the transfer of patented technology and cooperation in production. The Finnish company also hopes to contact the manufacturers that are interested in China.