Preparation and characterization of macroporous pumice-porcelain composite foams

The open-cell macroporous ceramic foams can be used to air and water decontamination after loading catalyst. A new kind of ceramic foam was prepared using pumice, porcelain stone, quartz as main raw materials and polyurethane sponge as template. During the process, the polyurethane sponges were immersed in the powder slurry while submerged to fill all the pores, which makes it uniformly coating the sponge. Then the samples were dried at 80°C, and then sintered at 1050°C -1200°C for 2h in air. The ceramic foams present high porosity from 75% to 90%, higher compassion strength from 10 MPa to 50MPa and lower volume density from 0.15g/cm³ to 0.32g/cm³. The SEM images revealed the open-cell structure in the product.