Effect of soil pH on the degradation of silicate glasses

Abstract

This paper reports the research on the physical‐chemical response of silicate glasses subjected to the action of three natural soils types: acidic, neutral, and basic. The main goal of the study was to characterize the corrosion mechanisms acting upon glasses formulated with chemical compositions that are commonly found in historical glasses through an accelerated aging test that replicates natural burial. Resulting data showed a distinct and recognizable response of each glass type, with pH as the key variable for glass corrosion. Results can be of great significance to historical glass studies, especially in choosing suitable conservation strategies for archeological findings.

Resource or waste? A perspective of plastics degradation in soil with a focus on end-of-life options

“…Burial in soil preserves almost all objects for at least a limited time and in many cases beyond thousands of years. One million years is roughly needed for a glass fragment to fully decay, but within a soil this time might be even more protracted (Palomar, 2016). It is not a casualty, in fact, that glass artefacts from very early glassmaking's beginnings were exposed in our museums.…”

“…Glass can be brittle or strong, but this does not affect its decomposition rate in soils, being less exposed to weathering. In general, soil pH is the key property that affects the extent of glass weathering (Palomar, 2016). The preservation capacities of different soils for different materials are variable, but apart from glass some materials, such as gold, ceramics, metals, and stones can survive virtually forever within the soil environment, although their surfaces could be altered (Kibblewhite et al., 2015).…”

Early stages of surface alteration of soda-rich-silicate glasses in the museum environment

“…[16]). It is a fact that some may apply or are related with historical glassworks, namely for objects in waterlogged or ground-water environment [17][18][19][20][21][22][23], window glass [9,13,24,25], or museums environment accelerated tests [11]. Nevertheless, only a few recent studies concern the problems directly related to museum glass objects and their real environment (and can be found mainly in [7,[26][27][28][29][30][31][32]).…”

Early stages of glass alteration in the coastal atmosphere

“…This damage can also accelerate the degradation reaction because pits can retain water favoring the formation of alteration layers around them (Figs. 3 a, b and c) [47], and the silica gel layers also retain water and leached ions, which can induce the basic mechanism of corrosion (Section 4.1) [42,49].…”