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Damage
LordenGoon - Damage
New glass could cut carbon footprint by nearly half and is 10x more damage resistant
Worldwide, glass manufacturing produces at least 86 million tons of carbon dioxide every year. A new type of glass promises to cut this carbon footprint in half. The invention, called LionGlass and engineered by researchers at Penn State, requires significantly less energy to produce and is much more damage resistant than standard soda lime silicate glass. The research team recently filed a patent application as a first step toward bringing the product to market.
"Our goal is to make glass manufacturing sustainable for the long term," said John Mauro, Dorothy Pate Enright Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State and lead researcher on the project. "LionGlass eliminates the use of carbon-containing batch materials and significantly lowers the melting temperature of glass."
Soda lime silicate glass, the common glass used in everyday items from windows to glass tableware, is made by melting three primary materials: quartz sand, soda ash and limestone. Soda ash is sodium carbonate and limestone is calcium carbonate, both of which release carbon dioxide (CO2), a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, as they are melted.
"During the glass melting process, the carbonates decompose into oxides and produce carbon dioxide, which gets released into the atmosphere," Mauro said.
But the bulk of the CO2 emissions come from the energy required to heat furnaces to the high temperatures needed for melting glass. With LionGlass, the melting temperatures are lowered by about 300 to 400 degrees Celsius, Mauro explained, which leads to a roughly 30% reduction in energy consumption compared to conventional soda lime glass.
Not only is LionGlass easier on the environment, it's also much stronger than conventional glass. The researchers said they were surprised to find that the new glass, named after Penn State's Nittany Lion mascot, possesses significantly higher crack resistance compared to conventional glass.
Some of the team's glass compositions had such a strong crack resistance that the glass would not crack, even under a one kilogram-force load from a Vickers diamond indenter. LionGlass is at least 10 times as crack-resistant compared to standard soda lime glass, which forms cracks under a load of about 0.1 kilograms force. The researchers explained that the limits of LionGlass have not yet been found, because they reached the maximum load allowed by the indentation equipment.
"We kept increasing the weight on LionGlass until we reached the maximum load the equipment will allow," said Nick Clark, a postdoctoral fellow in Mauro's lab. "It simply wouldn't crack."
Mauro explained that crack resistance one of the most important qualities to test for in glass, because it is how the material eventually fails. Over time, glass develops microcracks along the surface, which become weak points. When a piece of glass breaks, it's due to weaknesses caused by existing microcracks. Glass that is resistant to forming microcracks in the first place is especially valuable, he added.
"Damage resistance is a particularly important property for glass," Mauro said. "Think about all the ways we rely on the strength of glass, in the automotive industry and electronics industry, architecture, and communication technology like fiber optic cables. Even in health care, vaccines are stored in strong, chemically resistant glass packaging."
Mauro is hoping that the improved strength of LionGlass means the products created from it can be lighter weight. Since LionGlass is 10 times more damage resistant than current glass, it could be significantly thinner.
"We should be able to reduce the thickness and still get the same level of damage resistance," Mauro said. "If we have a lighter-weight product, that is even better for the environment, because we use less raw materials and need less energy to produce it. Even downstream, for transportation, that reduces the energy required to transport the glass, so it's a winning situation for everyone."
Mauro notes that the research team is still evaluating the potential of LionGlass. They have filed a patent application for the entire family of glass, which means there are many compositions within the LionGlass family, each with its own distinct properties and potential applications. They are now in the process of exposing various compositions of LionGlass to an array of chemical environments to study how it reacts. The results will help the team develop a better understanding of how LionGlass can be used throughout the world.
"Humans learned how to manufacture glass more than 5,000 years ago and since then it has been critical to bringing modern civilization to where it is today," Mauro said. "Now, we are at a point in time when we need it to help shape the future, as we face global challenges such as environmental issues, renewable energy, energy efficiency, health care and urban development. Glass can play a vital role in solving these issues, and we are ready to contribute."
注释：
lime: n
表示" 石灰"，means "a caustic substance produced by heating limestone"，如：He added some water into the lime.他往石灰里加了些水。
silicate: n
表示" 硅酸盐"，means "a salt or ester derived from silicic acid"，如：Ilvaite is a rare mineral of calcium-iron-bearing silicate.黑柱石是一种少见的含钙铁硅酸盐矿物。
tableware: n
表示" 餐具"，means "articles for use at the table (dishes and silverware and glassware)"，如：They were presented with a complete set of silver tableware as a wedding gift. 他们得到一整套银餐具作结婚礼物.
decompose: v
表示"分解，腐烂"，means "separate (substances) into constituent elements or parts； break down"，如：You can apply heat to decompose organic compounds. 你可以加热来分解有机化合物。
crack: v; n
表示"破裂"，means " make to develop a crack or cracks"，如：The glass will crack if you pour boiled water into it . 一倒进去滚开水，这个玻璃杯就会破裂。There is a crack in this window. 这扇窗户上有个裂纹。
crack resistance，表示"防开裂"
中文简要说明：
玻璃是重要的材料，但是也易碎，同时玻璃制造过程并不环保，每年为生产玻璃，至少排放了8600 万吨二氧化碳。美国宾州大学提出一种新式玻璃的配方与生产方式，它的碳足迹可望减少一半，而且强度更高。团队将这种环保又坚固的玻璃取名「狮子玻璃」(LionGlass )，刚刚提出了专利申请。
科技探索(Techxplore)报导，宾州大学材料工程的恩赖特教授(Dorothy Pate Enright)，以及首席研究员莫罗 (John Mauro) 表示：「现有的玻璃是硅酸盐质的，以三种主要材料制成：石英砂、纯碱和石灰石。纯碱是碳酸钠，石灰石是碳酸钙，两者在熔化时都会释放二氧化碳 (CO 2 )，这是为何玻璃生产会出现温室气体的主因。」
「我们修改玻璃配方，用氧化铝、铁化合物来取代纯碱和石灰石，结果发现，玻璃的熔化温度明显降低，原本的钠钙玻璃需要1500度的熔炉，现在只需900度即可，耗能减低了30%。」
同时，铝铁质的「狮子玻璃」也比传统玻璃更坚固，标准钠钙玻璃在 0.1 公斤的应力，就会出现裂纹，但是同样厚度的狮子玻璃，应力增加到1公斤仍然坚持着，显然抗裂性至少是标准钠钙玻璃的10 倍。
莫罗解释说，抗裂性是玻璃测试中最重要的质量之一，因为这是材料最终失效的原因。玻璃表面会先产生微裂纹，然后成为整个系统的弱点。因此从一开始就不易形成微裂纹的玻璃就特别有价值。狮子玻璃的高强度，也意味着它的成品可以更轻变薄，将可看到相当多样的玻璃产品。
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