Revolutionizing Construction: Harnessing Phosphorus Tailings for Lightweight, High‐Strength Wall Materials

Abstract The beneficiation of low‐grade phosphate ore leads to the production of a substantial quantity of phosphate tailings, thereby not only occupying land but also endangering the environment and potentially posing safety concerns. In this work, extrusion molding, steam‐curing, and calcined phosphate tailings are employed to fabricate lightweight wall materials with superior strength. It is found that the wall material has a special structure of interwoven needle‐like crystals as a way to provide high flexural strength. The main composition of 34.94% phosphate tailings, 36.75% calcined phosphate tailings, 16.64% silica fume, 6.67% anhydrous magnesium sulfate is required to achieve an optimal maintenance process for 4 h of heat preservation at 120 °C saturated vapor pressure environment. The prepared wall materials yield a flexural strength of 24.9 MPa, compressive strength of 18.9 MPa, softening coefficient of 0.81, apparent density of 1.594 g cm −3 , and thermal conductivity of 0.269 w/(m K), which meet the requirements of the Chinese standard “Lightweight strip board for building partition walls”. Moreover, the calculation revealed that phosphate tailings have a comprehensive utilization rate of 77.23%, effectively mitigating the issues arising from their accumulation and serving as an efficient means of utilizing solid waste derived from phosphate tailings.