A cenosphere is a lightweight, inert, hollow sphere filled with inert air or gas, typically produced as a byproduct of coal

Coal

Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...

 combustion

Combustion

Combustion or burning is the sequence of exothermic chemical reactions between a fuel and an oxidant accompanied by the production of heat and conversion of chemical species. The release of heat can result in the production of light in the form of either glowing or a flame...

 at thermal power plants

Fossil fuel power plant

A fossil-fuel power station is a power station that burns fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas or petroleum to produce electricity. Central station fossil-fuel power plants are designed on a large scale for continuous operation...

. The color of cenospheres varies from gray to almost white and their density

Density

The mass density or density of a material is defined as its mass per unit volume. The symbol most often used for density is ρ . In some cases , density is also defined as its weight per unit volume; although, this quantity is more properly called specific weight...

 is about 0.4–0.8 g/cm³, which gives them a great buoyancy

Buoyancy

In physics, buoyancy is a force exerted by a fluid that opposes an object's weight. In a column of fluid, pressure increases with depth as a result of the weight of the overlying fluid. Thus a column of fluid, or an object submerged in the fluid, experiences greater pressure at the bottom of the...

. Cf. glass microspheres.

Cenospheres are hard and rigid, light, waterproof, innoxious, and insulative. This makes them highly useful in a variety of products, notably fillers

Filler (materials)

Fillers are particles added to material to lower the consumption of more expensive binder material or to better some properties of the mixtured material...

. Cenospheres are now used as fillers in cement

Cement

In the most general sense of the word, a cement is a binder, a substance that sets and hardens independently, and can bind other materials together. The word "cement" traces to the Romans, who used the term opus caementicium to describe masonry resembling modern concrete that was made from crushed...

 to produce low density concrete

Concrete

Concrete is a composite construction material, composed of cement and other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate , water and chemical admixtures.The word concrete comes from the Latin word...

. Recently, some manufacturers have begun filling metals and polymers with cenospheres to make lightweight composite material

Composite material

Composite materials, often shortened to composites or called composition materials, are engineered or naturally occurring materials made from two or more constituent materials with significantly different physical or chemical properties which remain separate and distinct at the macroscopic or...

s with higher strength than other types of foam

Foam

-Definition:A foam is a substance that is formed by trapping gas in a liquid or solid in a divided form, i.e. by forming gas regions inside liquid regions, leading to different kinds of dispersed media...

 materials. Such composite materials are called syntactic foam

Syntactic foam

Syntactic foams are composite materials synthesized by filling a metal, polymer or ceramic matrix with hollow particles called microballoons, "syntactic" meaning "put together"...

. Aluminum-based syntactic foams are finding applications in the automotive sector.

Silver

Silver

Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...

-coated cenospheres are used in conductive coatings, tiles and fabrics. Another use is in conductive paint

Paint

Paint is any liquid, liquefiable, or mastic composition which after application to a substrate in a thin layer is converted to an opaque solid film. One may also consider the digital mimicry thereof...

s for antistatic coatings and electromagnetic shielding

Electromagnetic shielding

Electromagnetic shielding is the process of reducing the electromagnetic field in a space by blocking the field with barriers made of conductive and/or magnetic materials. Shielding is typically applied to enclosures to isolate electrical devices from the 'outside world' and to cables to isolate...

.

Production

The process of burning coal in thermal power plants produces fly ash

Fly ash

Fly ash is one of the residues generated in combustion, and comprises the fine particles that rise with the flue gases. Ash which does not rise is termed bottom ash. In an industrial context, fly ash usually refers to ash produced during combustion of coal...

 containing ceramic

Ceramic

A ceramic is an inorganic, nonmetallic solid prepared by the action of heat and subsequent cooling. Ceramic materials may have a crystalline or partly crystalline structure, or may be amorphous...

 particles made largely of alumina and silica. These particles form a part of the fly ash produced in the burning process. They are produced at the high temperature of 1,500 to 1,750 Celsius through complicated chemical and physical transformation. Their chemical composition and structure varies considerably depending on the composition of coal that generated them.

The ceramic particles in fly ash have three types of structures. The first type of particles are solid and are called precipitator. The second type of particles are hollow and are called cenospheres. The third type of particles are called plerospheres, which are hollow particles of large diameter filled with smaller size precipitator and cenospheres. Due to the hollow structure cenospheres have low density.

Fuel or oil cenospheres

The definition of cenosphere has changed over the last 30 years. Up until the 1990s it was limited to a largely carbonaceous

Carbonaceous

Carbonaceous is the defining attribute of a substance rich in carbon. Particularly, carbonaceous hydrocarbons are very unsaturated, high-molecular-weight hydrocarbons, having an elevated carbon:hydrogen ratio....

 sphere caused by the oxygen-deficient combustion of a liquid fuel droplet that was cooled below 200 degrees Celsius before it was consumed. These fuel cenospheres indicated a combustion source using injected droplets

Fuel injection

Fuel injection is a system for admitting fuel into an internal combustion engine. It has become the primary fuel delivery system used in automotive petrol engines, having almost completely replaced carburetors in the late 1980s....

 of fuel or the open burning of heavy liquid fuels such as asphalt

Asphalt

Asphalt or , also known as bitumen, is a sticky, black and highly viscous liquid or semi-solid that is present in most crude petroleums and in some natural deposits, it is a substance classed as a pitch...

 or a thermoplastic

Thermoplastic

Thermoplastic, also known as a thermosoftening plastic, is a polymer that turns to a liquid when heated and freezes to a very glassy state when cooled sufficiently...

 material that were bubbling as they burned; the bursting of the bubbles created airborne droplets of fuel. This is still a common definition used in environmental microscopy to differentiate between the inefficient combustion of liquid fuels and the high temperature fly ash resulting from the efficient combustion of fuels with inorganic contaminants. Fuel cenospheres are always black.

The refractory cenosphere as defined above is synonymous with microballoons or glass microspheres and excludes the traditional fuel cenospheres definition. The use of the term cenosphere in place of microballoons is widespread and it has become an additional definition.