Applications of Ceramics

Even though refractories are also ceramics, they have special applications. Hence, they are dealt with separately in this section, subsequent to a discussion on ceramics, other than refractories, and their applications. 

Ceramics find applications in various fields. There are applications for natural and synthetic ceramics, and there are traditional and engineering applications. 

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Application of ceramics allows using stainless steel as vacuum envelope. No surface charges ean deflect the electron beam. Mechanical elements and functions can be easily integrated into the envelope due to its stability. 

Ceramics, including concrete, are useful especially in structures, reactors, as refractories in combustion of fuels, and as nuclear fuel. Porcelain insulators on transmission lines are an example of a specialized application of ceramics. 

Other applications of ceramics require clay, either raw or purified, sand, and feldspar. Brick, porcelain, and white wares are made from these raw materials the main expenditure in making these products is in firing the mixtures of powders to a dense solid. Ordinary brick made from fire-clay requires a small amount of energy even refractory brick for high temperatures and chemical durability, made partly from purified oxides such as alumina or chrome ore,... 

Figure 17.27. Catalyst packed adiabatic reactor, showing application of ceramic balls of graduated sizes for support at the bottom and hold-down at the top Rase, Chemical Reactor Design for Process Plants, Wiley, New York, 1977).

Although this book covers most aspects of ceramics, most attention is paid to the period from approximately 1850 until now. This period is characterized by a rapid growth of industrial ceramics and a flourishing period for the type of ceramics which hardly used clay as a raw material, the co-called technical ceramics. The number of applications of ceramic materials in the period from 1850 until 2000 is much larger than in the entire ceramic history before 1850 (figure 2.5)... 

Fig. 2.5 Increase in the number of applications of ceramic materials after appr.

The book is aimed at ceramics in the year 2000 and the subject is introduced via two routes, i.e. the period of approximately 25,000 BC until about 1850 AD in which clay and related natural raw materials prevailed, and the period from 1850 until 2000 with clay and other, mainly synthetic raw materials. Despite the length of the period in which only clay was used, this book will pay relatively little attention to it. The reason for this is the fact that the number of application of ceramic materials increased considerably with the introduction of synthetic raw materials. Moreover, natural sciences have boomed enormously after World War II and consequently so did the education in ceramics. The main part of this book is therefore devoted to ceramics after 1945. Because one of the applications of this book is in the field of education, the text is occasionally illustrated with simple experiments. 

Kaya, H. The application of ceramic-matrix composites to the automotive ceramic gas turbine , Composites Sci. and Tech., 59 (1999) 861-872. 

The application of ceramics has infiltrated almost all fields in the last 20 years, because of their advantages over metals due to their strong ionic or covalent bonding. But it is just this bonding nature of ceramics that directly results in their inherent brittleness and difficulty in machining. In other words, ceramics show hardly any macroscopic plasticity at room temperature or at low temperatures like metals. Hence, superplasticity at room temperature is a research objective for structural ceramics. In recent years, many researches have been carried out to investigate nanophase ceramic composites. 

Ohnabe, H., Masaki, S., Onozuka, M., Miyahara, K., Sasa, T. (1999), Potential application of ceramic matrix composites to aero-engine components , Composites, 30A, 489-496. 

J.W. Bakker, Application of Ceramic Pervaporation Membranes in Polycondensation Reactions , pp. 448-51 in Proc. ICIM5 June 22-28, Nagoya, Japan (1998). 

Many applications of ceramic composites will expose the material to impact damage. Here again, the amount of work which has been done in this arena is limited, and needs to be increased. Impact tests can be performed using drop towers or Charpy impact testing apparatus. Such measurements have been done at room temperature30 and the apparatus can be adapted for use at elevated temperatures. 

To summarize, problems with the application of ceramic suspensions with inkjet printers grow with the (effective) volume fraction... 

A major new application of ceramic membranes is in the area of ultrafiltration. Ceramic membranes can outperform organic polymer... 

Mishra, B., D.L. Olson and P.D. Ferro, 1994, Application of ceramic membranes in molten salt processing of radioactive wastes, in Proc. 123rd Ann. Meeting of Minerals, Metals, and Mater. Soc., San Francisco, USA, p. 233. 

Muralidhara, H.S., and R. Bhave, 1994, A novel application of ceramic membranes to resin systems, presented at 3rd Int Conf. Inorg. Membr., Worcester, MA, USA. 

Cicero D.C. and Jarr L.A., Application of ceramic membranes in advanced coal-based power generation systems, Sep. Sci. Technol. 25 1455 (1990). 

In a general way, most of ceramic membrane modules operate in a cross-flow filtration mode [28] as shown in Figure 6.18. However, as discussed hereafter, a dead-end filtration mode may be used in some specific applications. Membrane modules constitute basic units from which all sorts of filtration plants can be designed not only for current liquid applications but also for gas and vapor separation, membrane reactors, and contactors, which represent the future applications of ceramic membranes. In liquid filtration, hydrodynamics in each module can be described as one incoming flow on the feed side gf, which results in two... 

Siskens CAM. Applications of ceramic membranes in hquid filtration. In Burggraaf AJ and Cot L (eds.). Fundamentals of Inorganic... 

Buekenhoudt A, Dotremont C, Aerts S, Vanckelecom I, and Jacobs PA. Successful applications of ceramic nanofiltration in non-aqueous solvents. Proceedings of the Eight International Conference on Inorganic Membranes, Cincinnati, OH, July 18-22, 2004 278-281. 

Zakrzewska-Trznadel, G. and Harasimowicz, M., Application of ceramic membranes for hazardous wastes processing Pilot plant experiments with radioactive solutions, Desalination, 162, 191, 2004. 

Structural Characterisation and Applications of Ceramic Membranes for Gas Separations... 

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