Characterizing waste glass durability: A highly-constrained 11-component mixture case study

Mixture experiments involving a large number of components and both single- and multiple-component constraints have received little exposure in the literature. This paper presents a case study involving such a mixture experiment. The case study deals with characterizing the chemical durability (resistance to leaching) of an 11-component reference waste glass. Because the composition of the glass will vary around the reference composition during production, the problem actually involves characterizing chemical durability over a region of glasses. This involves several steps: defining the compositional region, selecting a test matrix of compositions via computer-aided experimental design techniques, leach testing, empirical modeling of the leach test results, investigating glass component effects, and using statistical confidence statements to describe chemical durability over the compositional region. 10 refs., 1 fig., 6 tabs.