Effect of SiO2/Na2O mole ratio on the properties of foam geopolymers fabricated from circulating fluidized bed fly ash

Geopolymers are three-dimensional aluminosilicates formed in a short time at low temperature by geopolymerization. In this paper, alkali-activated foam geopolymers were fabricated from circulating fluidized bed fly ash (CFA), and the effect of SiO₂/Na₂O mole ratio (0.91–1.68) on their properties was studied. Geopolymerization products were characterized by mechanical testing, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The results show that SiO₂/Na₂O mole ratio plays an important role in the mechanical and morphological characteristics of geopolymers. Foam samples prepared in 28 d with a SiO₂/Na₂O mole ratio of 1.42 exhibit the greatest compressive strength of 2.52 MPa. Morphological analysis reveals that these foam geopolymers appear the relatively optimized pore structure and distribution, which are beneficial to the structure stability. Moreover, a combination of the Si/Al atomic ratio ranging between 1.47 and 1.94 with the Na/Al atomic ratio of about 1 produces the samples with high strength.