Asbestos minerals have been extensively used since the beginning of the last century. However, use of these minerals is now banned in many countries as inhalation of asbestos fibers may cause lethal lung diseases. Consequently, the elimination of asbestos-containing materials (ACM) from the environment is of high priority. The dismissal of these hazardous materials in waste plants can not be regarded as an ultimate solution due to the risk of fiber dispersion in air during dumping operations and storage. An alternative is thermal transformation of ACM in non-hazardous minerals which can be safely recycled. A common type of ACM is cement-asbestos for which an industrial process for safe transformation has been developed in Italy. The process includes a prolonged thermal treatment (ca 1200 °C) of packages of cement-asbestos slates in a tunnel kiln. To optimize the temperature cycle of the process, it is important to gain a full understanding of the transformation sequence and kinetics. However, due to the low brightness of in-house X-ray sources, long data collection times are required to obtain adequate data. Consequently, the time resolution is strongly limited and e.g. the appearance and disappearance of metastable phases may be difficult to detect. Hence, it is necessary to use synchtrotron radiation in order to obtain a complete picture of the temperature-induced reaction pathway. For the first time, an in situ high temperature synchrotron powder diffraction study of the thermal transformation of cement-asbestos is presented. Data from a commercial cement-asbestos slate were collected at the Italian beamline BM08 (GILDA) at the European synchrotron radiation facility (ESRF), Grenoble (France), using the translating imaging-plate technique. Figure 1 shows a selected 2? range of the powder patterns collected during heating of cement-asbestos up to ca 900 °C and subsequent cooling down to ca 300 °C. Important temperature-induced changes in phase composition are clearly observed (see the Figure).

• Legal notice:
  

  Copyright (c) Pielaszek Research, all rights reserved.
  The above materials, including auxiliary resources, are subject to Publisher's copyright and the Author(s) intellectual rights. Without limiting Author(s) rights under respective Copyright Transfer Agreement, no part of the above documents may be reproduced without the express written permission of Pielaszek Research, the Publisher. Express permission from the Author(s) is required to use the above materials for academic purposes, such as lectures or scientific presentations.
  In every case, proper references including Author(s) name(s) and URL of this webpage: https://science24.com/paper/14840 must be provided.

1. Thermal treatment on titania nanoparticles: time-resolved synchrotron x-ray diffraction studies on the effect of synthesis conditions and doping
2. The Rietveld structure refinement of an exceptionally pure sample of clinoptilolite from Ecuador and its Na-, K-, and Ca-exchanged forms