Abstract:
This research studied the production of cat-litter from phosphogypsum, by-products from the
production of chemical fertilizer. This cat-litter composed of phosphogypsum, paper and polyvinyl
alcohol. In this research, the experiments were separated into 2 parts. In the first part, it was
purposed to prepare cat-litter by varying amount of components and to find suitable water
percentage for cat-litter production considering the capability of being formed into pellet. The
results indicated that the appropriate water percentage ranged from 35.0 - 50.0 %wt and there were
10 samples of cat-litter obtained by varying amount of components in order to produce cat-litter. In
the second part, it was purposed to study the properties of the obtained cat-litters such as density,
resistance hardness, water adsorption, and urea solution adsorption. There were 3 samples (A50,
850 and C50) that the densities were lower than commercial cat-litter produced from bentonite (SO
which was their advantage in marketing. Comparison between cat-litter from this research and
commercial cat-litter produced from paper (S2) and silica (S3) indicated that although density of all
obtained cat-litters was higher than S2 and S3, resistance hardness of all obtained cat-litters were
higher than 2 commercial cat-litters (Sl and S3) and was similar to S2 resulted in lower amount of
dust that could be occurred during real use. Although all cat-litters had lower amount of water
adsorption and urea solution adsorption and lower rate of water adsorption and urea solution
adsorption than 2 commercial cat-litters (S2 and S3), they still had an advantage over Sl. This is
because, unlike SI, they were not easily broken after water adsorption making them suitable as cat-
litter. However, all cat-litter from this research had lower rate of water desorption than S2 (about 40
%) and higher rate of water desorption than S3 (about 64 %).