Abstract
The ceramic materials' properties and the penetrating liquid both influence liquid transport into ceramic catalytic materials. Terahertz pulsed imaging (TPI) in combination with a flow cell was used to investigate the transport process of polar and less polar solvents into a range of α-alumina powder compacts. The TPI results show that the alumina samples with the largest heating rate (200 °C h−1) have the fastest water transport. The TPI results also reveal that 1-octanol takes much longer to transport through the alumina samples than water, as the viscosity of 1-octanol is much larger than that of water. Since 1-octanol is semi-transparent to terahertz radiation, it was possible to study the liquid transport process and the structural changes behind the liquid front, such as the change in the refractive index of the compact and the fill fraction of 1-octanol in the compact as a function of time.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 119414 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Chemical Engineering Science |
| Volume | 284 |
| Early online date | 23 Oct 2023 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 5 Feb 2024 |
Funding
We would like to thank Johnson Matthey and the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for their funding through an iCASE award ( 1943009 ). We would also like to thank Marian Bentley, Michele Marigo and Karen Huang for their feedback and help preparing the alumina powder compacts. For the purpose of open access, the authors have applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.
Keywords
- liquid transport
- porous catalysts
- sintering
- solvents
- terahertz pulsed imaging
- α-alumina