Preparation and Characterization of Porous Ceramic Body Using Ball Clay

Abstract

In the past few years, porous ceramic materials having improved microstructure has become very popular due to its wide application in different fields. Now a days there are many techniques such as Polymeric Sponge Replica Technique, Starch consolidation method, Gel Casting method etc. have been developed for the preparation of porous ceramic body with controlled microstructure such as porosity, pore size, pore connectivity etc. In this project work, an effort has been made to prepare porous ceramic body (using Ball clay as raw material) by Polymeric Sponge Replica Technique. Ball clay used as major raw material with some amount of dispersant (sodium silicate) and some samples also prepared with some amount of PVA as binder and also observed the effect of binder on porosity. The optimal viscosity of the slurry for the Sponge replica technique was observed in the range 0.02-1.15 Pa.s. By the sponge replica technique, macroporous ceramic having pore size in the range 400 nm to 4 mm and the porosity 20% to 97% could be obtained. This macroporous body prepared by sponge replica technique can be used in different areas such as molten metal filtration, hot gases filtration etc. Solid loading is the main factor of the slurry was found for the preparation of porous ceramic body of different pore morphology by sponge replica technique. The porosity of the porous samples were measured by vacuum method, the porosity obtained in the range 70-85% and the strength of the samples was found 0.02-1.5 MPa. The microstructure such as pore size, pore connectivity has been analyzed by the FESEM.