Abstract:
The objectives of this research were to produce the ceramic filters from local material, PBA soil, and examined their dust filtration efficiencies. In filter production, the extruded PBA soil was cut in required size and then sintered at 700?C and 900?C for 1 hour. The sintered samples were tested for pore size distribution, porosity and mechanical strength for preliminary evaluation before using them as filters. It was found that the sample, which was sintered at 700?C , had 0.067 ?m of pore size, 27.32% of porous volume and 4.17 MPa of mechanical strength. While the sample, which was sintered at 900?C had 0.042 ?m of pore size, 20.47% of porous volume and 5.41MPa of mechanical strength. It could be expected that the sample, sintered at 700?C is more suitable because it has higher porosity and larger pore size. To investigate the filtration efficiency, the batch operation at the filtration velocity of 3 cm/s and inlet dust concentration of 4.10 g/m3 was selected as a test condition. It was found that the self-prepared ceramic filter had filtration efficiency of 99.99%, nearly that of Japanese ceramic filter. Cleaning efficiency at cleaning pressure of 300 kPa of self-prepared ceramic filter and Japanese ceramic filter had the same value of 98%.