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Journal of the European Ceramic Society 35 (2015) 35593566

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Journal of the European Ceramic Society


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jeurceramsoc

Feature article

Three-dimensional porous silica ceramics with tailored uniform


pores: Prepared by inactive spheres
Zhiqiang Sun a,b , Junmei Fan a , Fangli Yuan a,
a
b

State Key Laboratory of Multi-phase Complex Systems, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, PR China
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, PR China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 9 January 2015
Received in revised form 11 June 2015
Accepted 14 June 2015
Available online 26 June 2015
Keywords:
Porous ceramics
SiO2 spheres
Dense packing
Uniform pore
Three dimension

a b s t r a c t
Porous silica ceramics with uniform and fully interconnected pores in three dimensions are fabricated via
sintering of randomly dense packed SiO2 spheres. The pores which origin from the space existed between
stacked spheres are well reserved and the necks between spheres are formed during heat treatment.
Due to the inactive surface of raw spheres, the uneven shrinkage is well restrained and the interconnected uniform pores are obtained. The pore size has linear relationship with sphere size as equivalent
to D50 = 0.320 d50 1.6. The neck strength can be enhanced by increasing sintering temperature in
the range of 10901230 C with negligible effect on pore structures. The permeable performance shows
that the synthesized porous ceramic with D50 of 8.13 m has an enhanced nitrogen permeance of about
4.4 106 L/(m2 h) under 150 KPa and its rejection coefcient of oil\water mixtures is up to 99% meanwhile
the ux can reach 3.0 105 L/(m2 h).
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Porous ceramics, by virtue of their high specic surface area, low
thermal-expansion coefcient, excellent mechanical and chemical stability at elevated temperatures, have been expected to be
used for a wide variety of industrial applications from ltration,
absorption and catalyst supports to lightweight structural components [14]. The characterization of pores is the key factor for
their functional and structural applications [5]. The uniformity and
connectivity of pores have positive correlation with the ltration
performance of porous ceramics when they are applied as ceramic
lters [6]. The nonuniform pores which contain defects usually
suffer dissatised clearance for the smaller sized particle impurity, hence the desired ltration efciency cannot been achieved.
Except for larger ux, the fully interconnected pores can provide
more paths for uids which result in the enhanced sustainability
of lter. In addition, reduced stress concentration is promised and
the mechanical stability of porous ceramics is improved when uids ow through the interconnected uniform pores [5]. Hence, the
preparation of porous ceramics with uniform and interconnected
pores in three dimensions is of great signicance to industrial applications [5].

Corresponding author. Fax: +86 10 62561822.


E-mail address: yuan@home.ipe.ac.cn (F. Yuan).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jeurceramsoc.2015.06.020
0955-2219/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Various processing techniques have been available to prepare


macro-porous ceramic, which can be classied into ve categories
including (i) direct foaming [7], (ii) sacricial fugitives [8], (iii)
replica templates [9,10], (iv) freezing casting [11] and (v) partial
sintering [12]. Generally, partial sintering is a conventional and
frequently adopted approach to produce porous ceramic materials, for its simple and direct way on pore-forming process. Particles
are bonded due to mass transfer process reinforced by heat treatments, and a porous structure forms when necks between particles
appear. However, nonuniform pores are usually gained for porous
ceramics fabricated by irregular particles, owing to the presence of
uneven shrinkage. The uneven shrinkage usually occurs when the
rearrangement of particles and densication process takes place,
which results in adverse effect on controlling deliberately sizes,
amounts, shapes, locations and connectivity of distributed pores
[13]. In addition, the nonuniform voids caused by uneven shrinkage
can degrade the mechanical properties of porous ceramics due to
the decrease of minimum solid contact area [12]. Remarkably, the
active surface of irregular powders and the contained agglomerated
particles can promote the uneven shrinkage [12,14,15] in sintering
process as they are relatively active and easier to melt. Hence, the
employment of inactive powders without agglomerates is a feasible method to avoid uneven shrinkage and obtain interconnected
uniform pores.
In this article, spherical SiO2 particles (SSPs) with low sinteringactivity and uniform size were adopted to produce porous ceramics.
The source of pores is the space composed by the randomly dense

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stacked SSPs and the pores are reserved after sintered necks appear.
The spherical shape of the powders ensures the pores existed
between compact particles, which favors the formation of interconnected channels in ceramics. Dense packing can not only increase
the number of sintered necks to enhance ceramic strength, but
also reduce the probability of pores surrounded by numerous particles and thus results in a narrower pore size distribution. At last,
PSC with interconnected uniform pores and ne micro-morphology
was successfully fabricated, and its performance in nitrogen permeation and oil/water separation was veried.
2. Experimental procedure
2.1. Materials
SSPs were prepared via a two-step method combining
spray drying and DC thermal plasma sintering, and the
process conditions were shown in our earlier publication
[16]. In gelcasting process, acrylamide (AM, C2 H3 CONH2 ) and
N,N -methylenebisacrylamide (MBAM, (C2 H3 CONH)2 (CH2 )) were
used as monomers for polymerization. Ammonium persulfate
((NH4 )2 S2 O4 ) was added as an initiator and tetramethylethylenediamine (TEMED, (CH3 )2 NCH2 CH2 N(CH3 )2 ) was used as a catalyst.
All of these reagents were analytical pure.
2.2. Preparation of the porous silica ceramics
The preparation procedure is illustrated in Fig. 1. To begin of all,
AM and MBAM (mass ratio 30:1) were completely dissolved in a
certain amount of deionized water by mechanical stirring, and a
10 wt.% (for AM) premix solution was obtained, which served as
a dispersing media for the ceramic spheres. Secondly, the SSPs,
moderate TEMED and ammonium persulfate were added into
appropriate amount of premix solution successively. The slurry
was stirred evenly and the upper turbid liquid which contained
lots of superne debris was poured out after gravity sedimentation

Fig. 1. The fabrication diagram of porous silica ceramics.

of target spheres. Densely packed SSPs obtained with the help of


centrifugal sedimentation (TDL-5-A Centrifuge) with rotating
speed of 4500 r/min for 5 min. Thirdly, the compound was kept
at 60 C for 30 min to polymerize to gelled body, and then the
green body was produced. Subsequently, the green body containing
organic binder was heated at a heating rate of 2 C/min from 20 to
550 C under air atmosphere, and then the heating rate was accel-

Fig. 2. The characterization of synthesized spherical SiO2 particles: (a,b) SEM image of morphology, (c) cross-section image, and (d) XRD pattern.

Z. Sun et al. / Journal of the European Ceramic Society 35 (2015) 35593566

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Table 1
Chemical composition of synthesized spheres.
Composition

SiO2

Na2 O

CaO

Al2 O3

Others

Content (wt.%)

97.734

0.907

0.403

0.293

0.234

0.429

erated to 8 C/min from 550 C to sintered temperature. Finally, PSC


was achieved after a dwell time of 2 h.
2.3. Model oily waste water
Peanut and lubricating oil/water mixtures were chosen to test
the separation performance of prepared porous ceramic [17,18].
The model solutions were prepared in a heated stirred tank through
mixing oil (1 vol.%) with deionized water for 30 min at 60 C. To
simulate the primary separation process of oil, the mixture was
unstirred for 30 min to clarify and the free oil on the surface of the
mixture was drawn away. The claried oily water was attained and
showed a yellowish color. The initial feed concentration of peanut
and lubricating oil/water mixtures was 843 mg/L and 1026 mg/L,
respectively.
2.4. Characterization
2.4.1. Raw spheres
Scanning electron microscopy (SEM, JEOL, JSM-6700F) was used
to observe the morphology of synthesized spheres, and their
internal structures were observed by backscatter electron (BSE)
detectors under the background of epoxy resin. X-ray diffractometer (XRD, PANalytical, XPert PRO MPD) was applied with a scanning
speed of 8 /min to identify the phase composition of SSPs. The spe-

Fig. 3. The size distributions of four groups (Pt.14) of synthesized SiO2 spheres.

cic surface area (SSA) values were analyzed by the N2 adsorption


measurement (BET, NOVA-3200e) to illustrate the inactive surface of SSPs. Laser particle size analyzer (Beckman Coulter, LS 13
320) was used to determine the particle size distribution and their
average true density was measured by pycnometer (Micromeritics,
AccuPyc 1340).
2.4.2. Porous silica ceramics
The fracture surface and pore channels of PSCs were observed by
above-mentioned SEM and BSE, respectively. The image of fracture
surface and pore channels could be used to analyze the features
of pore structure and identify the shrinkage. BET analysis was
applied to reveal the specic surface area values of pore chan-

Fig. 4. (a) SEM image of typical fracture surface of porous silica ceramics, (b) the size distribution of SiO2 spheres in Sp.2 and Pt.2, (c) the cross-section image of pores and
(d) pore size distribution of porous silica ceramics.

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Table 2
Effect of particle size on porous silica ceramics.
Sample mark

Raw material size/d50 (m)

Median pore diameter (m)

Density (g/cm3 )

Open porosity (%)

Compressive strength (MPa)

Sp.1
Sp.2
Sp.3
Sp.4

30.75
41.73
56.20
63.85

8.13
11.75
16.04
19.52

1.33
1.20
1.13
0.87

29.35
34.15
38.94
41.34

29.8
17.1
8.5
4.7

nels. The pore sizes and distributions were detected by mercury


porosimetry (Micromeritics, AutoPore IV 9500). The bulk density
of PSC was calculated by weight and dimensional measurements
and the open porosity was evaluated by Archimedes displacement
method after processed for 10 min in deionized water with the
assistance of ultrasonic. The compressive strength of SiO2 ceramics with dimensions of around 13 mm 10 mm, was measured by
universal testing machine with a crosshead speed of 0.5 mm/min.
The heat treatment procedure was conrmed by TGDSC (NETZSCH STA 449C) under owing air with a heating rate of 10 C/min,
and XRD was applied to identify the phase development of silica
ceramics during heat-treated process.
2.4.3. The separation efciency of oil/water mixture
The total organic carbon (TOC) concentration of oil/water mixture was determined using the TOC (SHIMADZU) cell test. The
separation efciency of oil/water mixture was calculated according
to oil rejection coefcient (R(%)) by equation:
R(%) =

Cp
Co

100

(1)

where Co and Cp represent the original oil/water mixture and the


collected water, respectively.

phase of spheres was proved by XRD analysis, as shown in Fig. 2(d).


The chemical composition of the spheres is listed in Table 1, showing that the spheres are basically a silicate glass with low alkali
content.
Generally, fused silica powders (d50 , 27.749.6 m), with similar dimensions of our synthesized SSPs, gave values of specic
surface area in the range of 0.5130.777 m2 /g [19]. It is worth noting that the corresponding data of SSPs (d50 , 41.73 m) shown in
Fig. 2(a) is only 0.07 m2 /g which is about an order of magnitude
smaller than that of reported powders. Surprisingly, it is further
found that the BET data of synthesized SSPs are close to the theoretical calculation value of dense SiO2 sphere with a diameter of 40 m
(0.068 m2 /g). Compared to irregular silica powders, the minimum
specic surface area of the synthesized SSPs enables themselves
to have lower heat-absorbing efciency during heat treatment and
makes them to be less sensitive to temperature changes.
Four groups of SiO2 spheres with a different size distribution, marked Pt.1 (d50 , 30.75 m), Pt.2 (d50 , 41.73 m), Pt.3 (d50 ,
56.20 m) and Pt.4 (d50 , 63.85 m), respectively, are illustrated in
Fig. 3. It is found that the size distribution of synthesized four groups
of SSPs has Gaussian distribution-like with a narrow distribution.
The densities of Pt.14 are 2.024, 1.941, 1.830 and 1.675 g/cm3 ,
respectively, and the crush strength of synthesized SSPs is 95 MPa
[12], which can provide enough press strength for PSC.

3. Results and discussion


3.2. Characterization of the porous silica ceramics
3.1. Characterization of spherical SiO2 particles
Fig. 2(a) shows SEM images of the synthesized SSPs, and it
can be seen that the synthesized powders have good sphericity
and are relatively uniform in size. From the magnied image in
Fig. 2(b), it is further found that the surface of SSPs is smooth without visible aws and pores. The surface tension of fused silica in
thermal plasma ame prefers the spheroidization and smoothness
of the particles to reduce surface energy. Fig. 2(c) reveals its crosssection features under the background of epoxy resin, and it can
be seen that the internal structures of spheres are not constructed
by loosely packed aggregates but sintered compactly. The small
closed pores inside spheres were formed during its preparation, and
had no effect on open-structured porous ceramics. The amorphous

Fig. 4(a) is the SEM image of the typical fracture surface of PSCs
sintered at 1230 C for 2 h, exhibiting that densely arranged particles still have good sphericity and smoothness after sintered.
The pores are mostly composed by the cell walls of three or
four SSPs, and the pore channels can be considered that they are
made up of countless of continuous similar triangle and rectangle
cross sections. The sintered necks between spheres can be easily
observed, and the broken pieces and particles indicate adequate
neck strength. The size distribution of 300 random spheres on the
fracture surface of Sp.2 is almost coincided with the raw spheres,
as shown in Fig. 4(b). The d50 of spheres on Sp.2 is about 41 m
and is nearly the same as that of Pt.2, which conrmed the spheres
were rarely affected by sintering process and the pore structures

Fig. 5. (a) Pore size distributions of Sp.1, Sp.2, Sp.3 and Sp.4, (b) the liner relation of pore size and open porosity of sintered porous silica ceramics with median particle size.

Z. Sun et al. / Journal of the European Ceramic Society 35 (2015) 35593566

Fig. 6. TGDSC curve of green porous ceramic.

were well reserved. Unsurprisingly, the ratio of linear shrinkage is


not signicant at about 1%. The cross-section image of pore channels is shown in Fig. 4(c). It is clear that the sintering takes place on
the neck parts as the circle line shown in Fig. 4(c). The connected
path (marked white arrows) between particles proved that there
were no blockages derived from oversintering or uneven shrinkage. Cross sections in different directions show similar results and
well illustrate the formation of fully interconnected pores. The specic surface area of the pores (about 0.06 m2 /g) is slightly smaller
than Pt.2, which illustrates that the smooth pore structure can be
prepared by smooth spherical particles.
The pore size distribution of sintered PSC is a single peak
with extremely narrow half-peak width as shown in Fig. 4(d),

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Fig. 7. XRD patterns of synthesized spherical SiO2 particles sintered at different


temperatures.

and parameters are 8.73 m (D10), 11.75 m (D50) and 13.71 m


(D90), respectively, which illustrates the successful production of
narrow-pore-sized porous ceramics by spherical powders. The density and open porosity of the synthesized PSC are 1.20 g/cm3 and
34.15%, respectively. The compressive strength of this sample is
17.1 MPa which is enough to handle during the mechanical treatment and is sufcient for its practical applications.
3.3. Effects of particle size on porous silica ceramics
As mentioned in the introduction, the pore of the PSC is constructed by the space of densely stacked SSPs. The pore size of

Fig. 8. SEM images of fracture surface of porous silica ceramics heat-treated for 2 h at different temperatures: (a) 1090 C, (b) 1160 C, (c) 1230 C and (d) 1300 C.

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synthesized PSC must be tailored by the size of SSP. Four groups


of SSPs with different pore size marked as Pt.1, Pt.2, Pt.3 and Pt.4
were used to prepare PSCs sintered at 1230 C for 2 h, which marked
as Sp.1, Sp.2, Sp.3 and Sp.4, respectively. Fig. 5(a) shows the pore
size distributions of PSCs synthesized by SSPs with different sizes.
It revealed that the pore size increased with the increase of SSP
size. When the median size of SSP is 30.75 m, the pore size of
synthesized PSC is about 8.13 m, and the pore size increases to
11.75 m when SSP is 41.73 m in diameter. When the size of SSP
increases to 56.2 m, the size of pore also increases to 16.04 m.
Finally, the pore size increases to 19.52 m when the size of SSP
further increases to 63.85 m. Fig. 5(b) reveals the positive linear
relation of pore size (D50) and open porosity (Po ) of sintered PSCs
with median particle size. The linear tting equations are described
as follows:
D50 = 0.320 d50 1.6

(2)

Po = 0.165 d50 + 27.5

(3)

where D50, Po and d50 are pore size, open porosity and median particle size. The decreasing density of Pt.14 decreases the centrifugal
force during sedimentation, which brings the looser packing density and increased porosity. The tting equation brings us an
important guidance in practice for a targeted porous ceramic with
a certain pore size.
In addition to the inuence on pore size of synthesized PSCs, the
size of SSP can also affect the mechanical properties, and the results
are listed in Table 2. It is found that the strengths of PSCs drop gradually from 29.8 to 4.7 MPa with the SSP size increase from 30.75 to
63.85 m. The mechanical properties of PSC made by partial sintering depend largely on porosity, neck numbers, as well as neck
strength between grains [1]. It is a consensus from a scientic and
industrial viewpoint that the average neck strength between particles is equal after same heat treatment [20]. With the increase of
particle size, the number of necks per unit volume decreased and
porosity increased correspondingly. So, it was reasonable for the
decreasing strengths and densities of synthesized porous ceramics
when particle size increased [20].
3.4. Effects of sintering temperature on porous silica ceramics
In order to identify the appropriate sintering schedule, TGDSC
analysis (Fig. 6) on the green ceramics was applied with a heating
rate of 10 C/min. The DSC curve was divided into three stages for
a clear idea of analysis.
I) For temperatures ranging from 50 to 520 C, a slope on TG curve
is observed. The departure of the organics is responsible for the
mass variation (loss of 12%) and is correlated to the (A) and (B)
exothermic peak. In this temperature range, the decomposition
products are released through gaps of spheres.
II) Temperatures between 520 C and 1000 C can be classied as
stage two. In this stage, the baseline of DSC curve declines
notably illustrating a mild heat release process, and phase
changes may take place.
III) In stage three (10001300 C), an endothermic peak (noted (C))
around 1066.9 C is characteristic of glass transition, while the
higher reported value of Tg is 1200 C [21]. It could be explained
by the presence of mineralizing agent (Na2 O, etc., Table 1)
which could weaken the glass structure and reduce the viscosity by breaking the Si O Si bonds in the SiO4 network [22,23].
Then, a weak exothermic peak around 1165 C (Tn , noted (D))
was supposed to be bulk crystallite nucleation and the next
noticeable exothermic peak around 1242.3 C (Tc , noted(E)) is
denoted as bulk crystallization. Similar conclusions could also
be found in other literature reports [24,25].

Fig. 9. The compressive strength (a), open porosity (b), and density (c) of porous
silica ceramics sintered for 2 h at different temperatures.

The phase changes of SSPs heat-treated at different temperatures are shown in Fig. 7. After treatment at 700 C, quartz
and tridymite started to precipitate from the amorphous matrix
to reduce the internal energy of glass system, which was corresponded to the decline of DSC curve at stage two. Keeping

Z. Sun et al. / Journal of the European Ceramic Society 35 (2015) 35593566

3565

Fig. 10. SEM images of cracks on sphere (a) and neck (b).

temperature at 1100 C (between Tg and Tn ), unsurprisingly,


resulted in the appearance of high temperature phase (cristobalite), and the diffraction peak enhanced slightly after 1200 C
(between Tn and Tc ) heat-treatment. The content of cristobalite
increased remarkably when sintering temperature increased to
1300 C which exceeded Tc .
When sintering temperature exceeded Tg , the sintering of amorphous silica takes place [26]. Four temperature points (1090 C,
1160 C, 1230 C and 1300 C) exceeded Tg were chosen as nal
treated temperatures. Fig. 8(ac) shows the typical fracture surfaces of PSCs sintered at 1090 C, 1160 C, and 1230 C, respectively.
As can be seen, the amorphous SiO2 at the surface of spheres
fuse with each other. There are no visible defects derived from
uneven shrinkage and the micro-structure is barely affected by
increased sintering temperatures. By contrast, the reported active
silica spheres with high specic surface area, tend to undergo the
transform from solid particles to melt compact with temperature
higher than 850 C, which lead to the disappearence of the packed
pores [26]. These results well conformed that the inactive powders
have advantages in keeping their shape and the compact pores during sintering. However, after sintered at 1300 C, irregular bulges
appear on the SSPs and small pores emerge on the surface of thinshell SSPs, as shown in Fig. 8(d). XRD results have proved that the
content of cristobalite phase increased sharply after sintered at
1300 C, and the spheres were probably composed by cristobalite
and residual amorphous silica. The amorphous silica continuously
moved to cristobalite grains to support crystal growth at high sintering temperature. As a result, the space between cristobalite
crystalline grains can turn into pores and some sintered crystalline
grains give irregular bulges.
The values of compressive strength, open porosity and density
of the ceramics have an average of three sets of data, and their

variation trends as function of sintering temperature are summarized in Fig. 9. When treated temperature increases from 1090 to
1230 C, the compressive strengths of all samples increase to different extent while the densities and porosities change slightly.
It illustrated that the neck strength could be enhanced through
increasing sintering temperature in a wide range while the pore
structures were rarely affected. However, when heat treatment is
above 1300 C which exceeds Tc , the strengths decrease signicantly. To nd the reason of this phenomenon, the cross-section
features of PSC sintered at 1300 C are studied and shown in
Fig. 10. It is clear to see that cracks on spheres (Fig. 10(a)) and
necks (Fig. 10(b)) extend randomly, which are negative to strength.
The formation of cracks was related to the bulk crystallization
of -cristobalite at high temperature. It is reported that the cristobalite, as a high temperature polymorph of silica, undergoes
phase transformation with a volume contraction of about
5 vol.% when it is cooled down to 200270 C [27,28], which results
in the formation of cracks in as obtained silica ceramics. Besides, the
amorphous silica crystallization into cristobalite could increase the
glass viscosity drastically and inhibit the kinetics of mass transfer
during sintering [26]. In order to obtain the maximum strength of
PSCs, the sintering temperature should be precisely controlled to
get a balance between mass transfer rate and crystallization degree
of cristobalite. After contrasting the performance trend as shown
in Fig. 9, 1230 C can be chosen as the optimal treatment temperature.
3.5. Application of synthesized porous ceramics in uid ux
To explore the benet of three-dimensional interconnected and
uniform pores packed by spherical powders, a lter tube with same
micro dimensions of Sp.1 was used in nitrogen permeation test and

Fig. 11. Picture of prepared lter tube (a), ux (b) and rejection (c) of oil/water separation as a function of ltration pressure.

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Z. Sun et al. / Journal of the European Ceramic Society 35 (2015) 35593566

oil/water separation, where ux was the key parameter. Fig. 11(a)


shows the picture of prepared lter tube. Pressure dependent variation in permeate ux and rejection of oil/water separation are
presented in Fig. 11(b) and (c), respectively. As shown, the ux
increases linearly with the increasing P, which indicates the ow
is laminar, meanwhile the rejection coefcient shows a slowly
downward trend due to the probability of pushing oil drops out
rises. Operated at 100 KPa, the rejection coefcient is higher than
99%, and ux can reach 3.0 105 L/(m2 h). The high separation efciency may be derived from the larger thickness compared with
thinner ceramic membrane, and smaller emulsions can be trapped
in the pores. The relatively high ux indicates that the synthesized
PSCs have a wide applied prospect in ltration eld.
Permeation theory predicts that the ltration rate is directly proportional to the square of the effective pore size of the membrane
and inversely proportional to the thickness of the membrane [29].
According to this theory, the permeation data of different featured
porous ceramics could be compared equally, despite their different
thicknesses and micro pore sizes.
Operated at 150 KPa, nitrogen permeance of the lter tube can
reach 4.4 106 L/(m2 h). Under the same pressure, the nitrogen permeance of a common porous ceramic with mean pore diameter of
6.4 m and thickness of 30 m, is 9.82 104 m3 /(m2 h MPa) [30].
After unied by reference to the micro and macro dimensions of
the lter tube, this data is 1.47 105 L/(m2 h), which is about thirty
times smaller than that of our synthesized lter tube. This shows
that the interconnected uniform pores of porous ceramics prepared
by spherical powders have relatively low uid resistance. This could
be explained from two aspects: rstly, the low uid resistance
loss takes full advantage of uniform pores which have not obvious
change in pore size, and thus can avoid violent collision for uids;
secondly, compared with pores prepared by irregular powders, the
synthesized pores packed by spheres are fully interconnected in
three-dimensional space without dead pores.
4. Conclusions
In this work, porous silica ceramics with pore size (d50 ) in the
range of 8.1319.52 m and compressive strength in the range of
4.729.8 MPa were obtained by using SiO2 spheres with uniform
size and inactive surface. Owing to the lower sintering activity of
raw spheres, the uneven shrinkage was well restrained and the
interconnected uniform pores were obtained.
The results showed that the particle size and sintering temperature had great effects on the property and microstructure of
PSCs. Both pore size and open porosity had linear relationship with
particle size (d50 ), and the pore size D50 (m) and open porosity Po (%) could be calculated according to D50 = 0.320 d50 1.6
and Po = 0.165 d50 + 27.5, respectively. The neck strength could
be enhanced through increasing sintering temperature in the
range of 10901230 C while the pore structures were rarely
affected. The application investigation revealed that as prepared
porous ceramics possessed enhanced nitrogen permeance of about
4.4 106 L/(m2 h) under 150 KPa and its rejection coefcient of
oil\water mixtures was up to 99% meanwhile the ux could reach
3.0 105 L/(m2 h).
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