Membranes of ceramic foams exhibit excellent prospects for application in the field of high-temperature particulate matter (PM) capture. Production of ceramic membranes that can achieve good removal efficiency as well as low pressure drop in high-efficiency PM filtration represents a great challenge. This paper reports on the preparation of porous-foam mullite-bonded SiC-ceramic membranes (MSCMs) with a 3D interconnecting pore network by a direct foaming method combined with gel-tape casting. The produced MSCMs contained large pores with a diameter of 60-150 mu m, which were interconnected with abundant small functional (for filtering) pores of < 10 mu m. Increasing the amount of the foaming agent favored the increase of porosity of the MSCMs, which was tailored between 69.2% and 84.1%, while the bending strength decreased from 10.3 to 4.0 MPa, respectively. High PM filtration efficiency (70.2%, 90.1%, and 94.6% for PM0.3, PM2.5, and PM10, respectively) and ultra-low pressure drop (27 Pa) were also recorded. Hence, the produced MSCMs qualify for application as high-temperature PM filters. This work also aims at providing a new insight into developing high-efficiency air filters. (c) 2021 Published by Elsevier B.V.
NSTL
Elsevier