Abstract:
The aim of this work is to obtain sintered porous membranes with graded structure for microfiltration by sedimentation and
sintering of metallic powders. Our previous studies have demonstrated the possibility of obtaining sintered porous materials with
graded structure by sedimentation. In this paper, spherical nickel particles were used having a grain size in the 2-90 µm range
measured by the laser scattering particle size analyzer. The powders were sedimented into a sintering die in a sedimentation
medium consisting of water and dispersant agent. After drying, the samples were sintered at 1000°C for 10 minutes in vacuum
(1.3*10-3 Pa). The structures obtained were characterized by scanning electron microscopy and mercury porosimetry. The pore
size distribution was between 4 - 37 µm and the viscous permeability coefficient equals 1.32*10-12 m2. The relative filtration
fineness obtained for our membranes was 8 µm. The possible applications for the studied membrane are: water microfiltration,
environmental technologies, filtering lubricants and cleaning agents.