Freeze casting of novel porous silicate cement supports using tert-butyl alcohol-water binary crystals as template: Microstructure, strength and permeability

Freeze casting liquid dispersions of solid particles is an effective method for preparing porous composites, thus creating strong and lightweight materials with designed microstructures for various applications. This work illuminates that tert-butyl alcohol (TBA)/water (H2O) mutually miscible system can be used as template to prepare aligned porous silicate cement supports with unique pore structures via directional freezing. The resulting pore morphology of porous cement substrates changes from prismatic to needle-like, dendritic, coralline, graininess and lamellar structure with the increasing of TBA-H2O ratio in cement slurry. Pore size distributions (macropores and mesopores) demonstrate the hierarchical pore structure of porous cement. The BET surface area (SBET) of porous cement support increases with the decreasing TBA content in cement slurry, until the pore forming agent was pure water. Porous cement that are fabricated from mixed slurries with relatively high TBAH(2)O ratio show better mechanical strength. Porous cement support prepared from cement slurry with 90 wt% TBA exhibits the best permeation performance due to its well-distributed and oriented pore structure. These findings demonstrate how an aligned and hierarchical porous inorganic support with desirable properties can be prepared, under mild conditions, with the combination of advanced casting technique and most ancient construction material on earth.