Porous alumina ceramics prepared with wheat flour

It is shown that wheat flour can be used as a pore-forming and body-forming agent in ceramic technology. In contrast to pure native starch, however, the pores do not result from the swelling starch granules alone but are mainly due to protein-assisted foaming. Therefore the porosity is significantly higher and the pore size larger than that resulting from the starch granules alone, and the wet milling time applied for homogenizing the ceramic suspensions becomes the most critical process parameter. Alumina suspensions with 70 wt.% alumina and 20-30 vol.% wheat flour with different initial particle size (fine grade and semolina, respectively) have been prepared using milling times of up to 8 h. Porosities of up to approx. 60% can be achieved with only 20 vol.% of flour or semolina after 8 h of milling time, with the cell sizes (diameters of pore cavities resulting from foam bubbles) being essentially independent of the milling time (median diameters of 120-240 mu m). Effective pore throat sizes (i.e. diameters of cell windows or channels between cells), measured via mercury porosimetry, are 1-2 mu m for short milling times (2-3 h), but for long milling times (8 h) they change by more than one order of magnitude to median sizes of 20-30 mu m, closely corresponding to the median size of wheat starch granules (approx. 20 mu m). (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.