Recycling of waste serpentine for the production of forsterite refractories: the effects of various parameters on the sintering behavior

The waste serpentine, natural magnesite, and caustic magnesia were used for the production of the sintered forsterite. The forsterite-phase content of the samples sintered at 1650 °C reached to 93.6 wt.%. The effects of various parameters such as additives, particle size, and calcined raw materials were tested on the sintering behavior. The thermal expansion of 9.54 × 10−6 at 800 °C and pH of 8.99 were obtained from the samples fired at 1650 °C. These results reveal that sintered forsterite has properties similar to those of natural olivines and propose an actual solution to overcome the environmental problem resulting from several million tons of waste rocks in Abdasht chromite mines.