Chemical & Mineralogical Properties of Fly Ash

Abstract

Fly ash is the finely divided mineral residue resulting from the combustion of coal in electric generating plants. Fly ash consists of inorganic, incombustible matter present in the coal that has been fused during combustion into a glossy, amorphous structure. Fly ash particles are generally spherical in shape and range in size from 2 μm to 10 μm. They consist mostly of silicon dioxide(SiO2), aluminium oxide (Al2O3) and iron oxide (Fe2O3). Fly ash like soil contains trace concentrations of the following heavy metals: nickel, vanadium, cadmium, barium, chromium, copper,molybdenum, zinc and lead. The chemical compositions of the sample have been examined and the flyash are of ASTM C618 Class F.