Thin Film Transistor-Liquid Crystal Display Cullet: A Raw Material for Production of Commercial Soda Lime Silicate Glasses

Alkali free alumino-borosilicate display glasses that serve as the window in a TFT-LCD (hereafter LCD) device not only have few impurities but also high homogeneity to guarantee the quality of the display. These characteristics of LCD glasses enable the possibility of recycling LCD glass cullet as a raw material for commercial soda lime silicate glasses from the perspectives of the raw material costs and the energy saving. In the present work, several batches containing LCD cullet for two commercial model glasses were prepared and melted in the laboratory. According to several properties of the melts and the glasses, there was no serious change in the properties with up to 9 wt% replacement of the flint glass and 11 wt% replacement of the low iron flat glass by the LCD cullet. Currently, LCD cullet is being used successfully in a number of industrial plants for the production of flint glass in Korea. Two-thirds of flint bottle glasses contain B2O3 component derived from LCD cullet.