Advanced Process of Waste Glass Bottle for the Production of Recycled Glass Aggregate and Cullet

In Korea, ~20% of waste glass bottles are buried in landfills every year. Many studies have been conducted to utilize this waste in foamed glass and cement production. However, more research is needed to find efficient methods to convert the waste to valuable materials, such as recycled fine aggregates. In this study, we designed an integrated crushing-grinding-separation process involving additional crushing equipment to handle large amounts of waste glass bottles and determined whether the products met recycled fine aggregate quality standards. Waste glass bottles were crushed to a size less than 10 mm using a pilot-scale shredder and roll, hammer, and vertical shaft impact (VSI) crushers. We found that the VSI crusher is the most suitable equipment, in terms of crushing performance and ease of operation, to convert the glass bottles to recycled fine aggregates. The crusher generated products exhibiting aspect ratios less than those of natural sand in most particle sizes. The proposed process is a promising way to convert glass wastes to recycled aggregates. We expect that incorporating optical-sorting-based techniques into the process will further increase the recycling rate of waste glass bottles, even from a mix of bottles with different colors.