Effect of yeast content as pores forming agent on porous alumina ceramic

Abstract

This research is carried out to determine the effect of yeast content on the physical, mechanical and macrostructure properties of porous alumina ceramic material. The porous ceramic material was fabricated through the mixing of alumina, calcium oxide and zeolite as the main materials. Meanwhile, the ethylene glycol act as the binder. Besides that, yeast was used as pores forming agent and the value is varied from 0 wt.% up to 20 wt.% from the total weight of ceramic materials. After that, the slurry was cast into mold and allowed it to dry under the room temperature before being sintered at the temperature of 1400 °C for two hours. Linear shrinkage, apparent porosity, macrostructural analysis, pores size measurement and mechanical tests were carried out to determine the effect of yeast content on the porous ceramic. The results showed that the linear shrinkage, average apparent porosity and pore size increased with the increased weight percentage of yeast content from 1.63% to 6.66%, 35.46% to 46.54% and 49.814 μm to 194.297 μm, respectively. The increasing of porosity and pore size give an effect to the mechanical 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. Thus, this shows that yeast as pores forming agent have huge potential in fabrication of porous ceramic material products.