Effect of pore-forming agents in macroporous ceramic fabrication as carbon dioxide adsorption

• Main Author: Nasir, Nurulfazielah
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English
• Published: UTeM 2018
• Subjects: T Technology (General); TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
• Online Access: http://eprints.utem.edu.my/id/eprint/23497/1/Effect%20Of%20Pore-forming%20Agents%20In%20Macroporous%20Ceramic%20Fabrication%20As%20Carbon%20Dioxide%20Adsorption%20-%20Nurulfazielah%20Nasir%20-%2024%20Pages.pdf; http://eprints.utem.edu.my/id/eprint/23497/2/Effect%20of%20pore-forming%20agents%20in%20macroporous%20ceramic%20fabrication%20as%20carbon%20dioxide%20adsorption.pdf; http://eprints.utem.edu.my/id/eprint/23497/; https://plh.utem.edu.my/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=113259

Currently, the excessive emissions of carbon dioxide in atmosphere which can cause the increasing of average temperature in atmosphere has become one of the most urgent environmental issues. This problem has triggered research for ways to reduce carbon dioxide emission. The aims of this research are to fabricate macroporous ceramic material by using mixture of aluminium powder with polymeric spheres, and yeast as pore-forming agent; determine the main properties of ceramic product such as porosity, pore size and mechanical strength; and analyse carbon dioxide adsorption on porous ceramic product. The preliminary experiment shows that yeast was found to give better results as a pore-forming agent compared to the mixture of aluminium powder and polymeric spheres. The average pore sizes by using yeast are closer to 200 µm which is the optimal contact surface area with the gas flow and to ensure the uptake time of carbon dioxide gas in the order of seconds. The porous ceramic material was developed by the mixing of alumina, zeolite and calcium oxide as the main materials, yeast as the pore-forming agent and ethylene glycol as the binder. The yeast content varied from 0% up to 40% from the total weight of ceramic materials. Then, the slurry was cast into mould and allowed to dry under room temperature before being sintered at 1400 °C for two hours. Microstructural analysis and pores size measurement were performed to determine the effect of pore-forming agent on the ceramic and mechanical properties test has been carried out to determine the effect of density and porosity of sintered porous ceramic toward its mechanical strength. From the results obtained, the average apparent porosity and pore size increased with the increased weight percentage of yeast content from 35.46% to 46.54% and 49.814µm to 194.297µm, respectively. The increasing of porosity and pore size give an effect to the compression strength of sintered porous ceramic by decreasing it from 17.47 MPa to 10.66 MPa, which were inversely proportional to porosity and pore size. The phase determination by XRD, mapping and point ID spectrum at several points by SEM-EDX of the sintered ceramic indicates that zeolite particles remained after been sintered at 1400 ºC. The increased average apparent porosity and pore size increased the volume of carbon dioxide adsorption. It was found that 20 wt.% of yeast content suitable to be applied as carbon dioxide filter.