Silicon carbide ceramic foam is an innovative material with numerous high-performance applications. In this article, we’ll take a deeper dive into its properties, manufacturing process and applications for this outstanding material.
Foam ceramics can be sintered densely under atmospheric air pressure, significantly lowering enterprise production costs. Furthermore, their lower pressure drop than pellets makes for higher effectiveness factors and overall cost efficiency.
Corrosion Resistant
Silicon carbide ceramic foam is an innovative inorganic non-metallic material developed in the 1970s. Featuring numerous pores in its internal structure and excellent adsorption, filtration, and heat transfer properties – making it an attractive high-temperature material with broad applications in metallurgy, petrochemistry and other fields.
Foamed SIC boasts exceptional hardness (Mohs 9), high thermal conductivity, low thermal expansion rates and good corrosion resistance properties. Additionally, its uniform pore distribution results in strong mechanical strength and abrasion resistance resulting in excellent mechanical strength and abrasion resistance resulting in its use as wear-resistant lining for high speed equipment in both manufacturing and metallurgy such as cutting tools with sharp abrasives or components made of abrasive materials.
Foamed SIC can also be found in chemical industry furnaces such as steam generators and high-pressure adiabatic burners to enhance combustion processes, as well as fluidized bed bottom plates, humidifiers, boiling water systems, microbial carriers and humidifiers. Due to its high porosity, low pressure, large heat exchange area and unique spatial network structure. Foamed SIC can even be sintered densely under atmospheric air without increasing sintering temperatures and densification costs.
High Temperature Resistant
Silicon carbide ceramic foam’s exceptional thermal stability and resistance to high temperatures, rapid temperature changes, and thermal shock make it the ideal material for many different applications. Furthermore, its foam structure provides ample surface area making it an excellent choice for filtering or catalytic reactions.
Silicon carbide ceramic foam filters for casting of ductile cast iron and ash cast iron have proven extremely effective at decreasing inclusion defect waste in molten metal, decreasing gas and harmful elements content in metal liquid, improving metal matrix organization, and vastly improving mechanical properties of cast products, all which significantly increases casting quality while decreasing rejection rates.
Silicon carbide ceramic foam offers superior chemical resistance, making it a fantastic choice for use in demanding environments such as chemical processing and wastewater treatment. Its improved performance and durability translate into lower maintenance and lifecycle costs and are widely utilized by various industries such as steel production where foam filters help eliminate impurities and gases that reduce production times to produce superior-quality alloys.
High Pressure Resistant
With the rapid advancements of national defense, nuclear energy, aerospace technology, automobile industry and marine engineering come an increasing need for advanced high-performance materials. Porous ceramics featuring superior mechanical strength, chemical inertness, thermal shock resistance as well as corrosion and wear resistance have become particularly necessary to meet this demand.
Silicon carbide, commonly referred to as “carborundum”, is an inorganic nonmetallic material composed of silicon and carbon atoms. Found naturally as moissanite mineral in nature, silicon carbide has been mass produced since 1893 as an abrasive.
Foam ceramics with numerous pores in their internal structures find use across numerous fields – including metallurgy, chemical industry, environmental protection, energy production and biology. Their advantages include lightweight construction, excellent heat and chemical resistance, simple regeneration techniques that extend service life significantly as well as effective filter adsorption capacity.
Foam ceramics offer enterprises significant cost-cutting advantages over traditional ceramics in production terms, since they can be sintered and densified under atmospheric pressure without needing high pressure or inert atmospheres to do it. Furthermore, their porous surface helps mitigate oxidation on its surface to improve performance overall and lower production costs significantly.
High Strength
Foam ceramics are three-dimensional networks of struts composed of inorganic materials such as silicon carbide. As lightweight materials with high strength and corrosion resistance, thermal shock resistance, abrasion resistance, as well as impressive mechanical properties (low density and excellent gas/liquid permeability) these impressive foam ceramics possess numerous desirable attributes that make them the perfect material to form foam ceramics.
Foamerism is one of the most efficient methods of creating porous inorganic ceramics. The process uses polymers as templates to produce networks of struts that can later be filled with various inorganic materials and filled with open or closed pores surrounded by sinter-active material matrixes, creating foams produced through polymer replica technique with limited pore size distribution and porosity; however these limitations can be improved using various sintering additives.
Direct foaming is another method for producing ceramic foams. This involves injecting gas into a solution or softened preceramic polymer by mechanical frothing, chemical reaction or decomposing of blowing agents; once produced the foams can then be sintered with additives to enhance their sinterability and compressive strength.
Low Density
Silicon carbide ceramic has an extremely lightweight foam structure, helping reduce costs for filter systems. Furthermore, this material can be made to suit a range of different applications by creating custom sizes and shapes.
Metal has incredible mechanical strength, withstanding loads, vibrations, impacts and other forces without losing its shape or bending under pressure – making it an excellent option for use as structural reinforcement in aerospace, automotive and engineering industries.
Silicon carbide ceramic foam features an open cell microstructure with high porosity and air permeability, with interconnected pores for effective gas and liquid filtration. This feature can also help improve metal liquid filtration processes to increase quality while preventing impurities from entering casting processes.
Foam ceramic sintering can often be carried out in atmospheric air, helping reduce costs and lessen oxidation of SiC. Furthermore, this process eliminates the need for high pressure or inert atmosphere environments, improving overall performance of silicon carbide foam ceramics significantly.