• Journal of the Mineralogical Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.313-324
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• 2009

We explore the effect of particle shape and size on 3-dimensional (3D) network and pore structure of porous earth materials composed of glass beads and silica gel using NMR micro-imaging in order to gain better insights into relationship between structure and the corresponding hydrologic and seismological properties. The 3D micro-imaging data for the model porous networks show that the specific surface area, porosity, and permeability range from 2.5 to $9.6\;mm^2/mm^3$, from 0.21 to 0.38, and from 11.6 to 892.3 D (Darcy), respectively, which are typical values for unconsolidated sands. The relationships among specific surface area, porosity, and permeability of the porous media are relatively well explained with the Kozeny equation. Cube counting fractal dimension analysis shows that fractal dimension increases from ~2.5－2.6 to 3.0 with increasing specific surface area from 2.5 to $9.6\;mm^2/mm^3$, with the data also suggesting the effect of porosity. Specific surface area, porosity, permeability, and cube counting fractal dimension for the natural mongolian sandstone are $0.33\;mm^2/mm^3$, 0.017, 30.9 mD, and 1.59, respectively. The current results highlight that NMR micro-imaging, together with detailed statistical analyses can be useful to characterize 3D pore structures of various porous earth materials and be potentially effective in accounting for transport properties and seismic wave velocity and attenuation of diverse porous media in earth crust and interiors.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.299-308
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• 2009

We manufactured PVA-derived hydrogels using a foam generation technique that has been widely used to prepare colloidal gas aphrons(CGA). These gels were differentiated to the conventional gels such as for medical or pharmaceutical applications, which have tiny pores and some crystalline structure. Rather these should be used in de-pollution devices or adhesion of cells or biomolecules. The crosslinkers used in this work were amino acid, organic acid, sugars and lipids(vitamins). The structures of the gels were observed in a scanned electron microscope. Amino acids gels showed remarkably higher swelling ratios probably because their typical functional groups help constructing a highly crosslinked network along with hydrogen bonds. Boric acid and starch would catalyze dehydration while structuring to result in much lower water content and accordingly high gel content, leading to less elastic, hard gels. Bulky materials such as ascorbic acid or starch produced, in general, large pores in the matrices and also nicotinamide, having large hydrophobic patches was likely to enlarge pore size of its gels as well since the hydrophobicity would expel water molecules, thus leading to reduced swelling. Hydrophilicity(or hydrophobicity), functional groups which are involved in the reaction or physical linkage, and bulkiness of crosslinkers were found to be more critical to gel's cross linking structure and its density than molecular weights that seemed to be closely related to pore sizes. Microscopic observation revealed that pores were more or less homogeneous and their average sizes were $20{\mu}m$ for methionine, $10-15{\mu}m$ for citric acid, $50-70{\mu}m$ for L-ascorbic acid, $30-40{\mu}m$ for nicotinamide, and $70-80{\mu}m$ for starch. Also a sensory test showed that amino acid and glucose gels were more elastic meanwhile acid and nicotinamide gels turned out to be brittle or non-elastic at their high concentrations. The elasticity of a gel was reasonably correlated with its water content or swelling ratio. In addition, the PVA gel including 20% ascorbic acid showed fair ability of cell adherence as 0.257mg/g-hydrogel and completely degraded phenanthrene(10 mM) in 240 h.

• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.401-406
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• 2012

For bone regeneration from KUSA-A1 oesteoblast cells (KUSA), chitosan (CS) scaffolds possessing different surface properties, sponge-type (CSS) and nonwoven-type (CSNW), were manufactured. Surface area and pore size of CSNW were larger than those of CSS. On the other hand, the pore volume of CSNW was smaller than that of CSS. Cell attachment evaluation showed CSNW was more adequate then CSS, and this was attributed to the large surface area. For in vivo investigation, KUSA were seeded into CS scaffolds in wells followed by a week of cell culture. Obtained CS scaffolds with KUSA were implanted on the subcutaneous tissue of BALB/C nude mice. After surgery, implanted scaffolds were harvested and assayed by immunological staining. Network stability of CSS was better than that of CSNW, even if CSS scaffolds were destroyed between 4 and 6 weeks. Calcification was observed after 4 and 8 weeks for CSNW and CSS, respectively.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.309-315
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• 2012

Metal foam has many excellent properties, such as light weight, incombustibility, good thermal insulation, sound absorption, energy absorption, and environmental friendliness. It has two types of macrostructure, a closed-cell foam with sealed pores and an open-cell foam with open pores. The open-cell foam has a complex macrostructure consisting of an interconnected network. It can be exploited as a degradable biomaterial and a heat exchanger material. In this paper, open cell Mg alloy foams have been produced by infiltrating molten Mg alloy into porous pre-forms, where granules facilitate porous material. The granules have suitable strength and excellent thermal stability. They are also inexpensive and easily move out from open-cell foamed Mg-Al alloy materials. When the melt casting process used an inert gas, the molten magnesium igniting is resolved easily. The effects of the preheating temperature of the filler particle mould, negative pressure, and granule size on the fluidity of the open cell Mg alloy foam were investigated. With the increased infiltration pressure, preheat temperature and granule sizes during casting process, the molten AZ31 alloy was high fluidity. The optimum casting temperature, preheating temperature of the filler particle mould, and negative pressure were $750^{\circ}C$, $400-500^{\circ}C$, and 5000-6000 Pa, respectively, At these conditions the AZ31 alloy had good fluidity and castability with the longest infiltration length, fewer defects, and a uniform pore structure.

• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.185-190
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• 2009

Fe-Cr steels are the most promising candidate for interconnect in solid oxide fuel cells. In this study, an effective, dense and well adherent (LaSr)(CrCo)$O_3$ [LSCC] coating layer was produced onto 430 stainless steel (STS-430) by atmospheric plasma spraying and the oxidation behavior as well as electrical properties of the LSCC coated STS-430 were investigated. A significant oxidation of pristine STS-430 occurred at $800^{\circ}C$ in air environment, leading to the formation of $Cr_2O_3$ and $FeCr_2O_4$ scale layer up to ${\sim}7{\mu}m$ after 1200h, and consequently increased an area specific resistance of $330\;m{\Omega}{\cdot}cm^2$. Although the plasma sprayed LSCC coating contained the characteristic pore network, the coated samples presented apparent advantages in reducing oxidation growth of STS-430, resulting a decrease in oxide scale thickness of ${\sim}1{\mu}m$ at $800^{\circ}C$ after 1200h. The area specific resistance of the LSCC coated STS-430 was much reduced to ${\sim}7\;m{\Omega}{\cdot}cm^2$ after exposure at $800^{\circ}C$ for 1200h, compared to that of the pristine STS-403.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.318-322
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• 2007

Porous ${\beta}-tricalcium$ phosphate $({\beta}-TCP)$ bioceramic was fabricated by pressureless sintering using commercial HAp and different volume percentages of PMMA powders (30-60 vol.%). The range of spherical pore size was about $200-250\;{\mu}m$ in diameter. By increasing the PMMA content, the number of pores and their morphology were dramatically changed as well as decreased the material properties. In case of using 60 vol.% PMMA content, network-type pores were found, due to the necking of the PMMA powders. The values of relative density, elastic modulus, bending strength and hardness of the 60 vol.% PMMA content sample, sintered at $1500^{\circ}C$, were about 46%, 22.2 GPa, 5MPa and 182 Hv respectively. Human osteoblast-like MG-63 cells and osteoclast-like Raw 264.7 cells were well grown and fully covered all of the porous ${\beta}-TCP$ bodies sintered at $1500^{\circ}C$.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.29 no.10
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• pp.1993-1997
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• 2008

In the present work, Diels-Alder reaction of cyclopentadiene with ethylacrylate has been carried out by using two types of mesoporous solid acid catalysts (Al-MCM-41, Al-MCM-48) with different pore structures. The specific topology of Al-MCM-48 (cubic Ia3d structure composed of two independent 3-D channel systems) exhibit higher activity and stereo-control than those of Al-MCM-41 (hexagonal packing of 1-D channels). The physical properties of Al-MCM-48 catalyst, such as high accessibility of reactants to the acid sites, spatial confinement in the nanoscopic reactors, and 3-D channel network structure that are effective adsorption and diffusion of reactants, play a crucial role in the present study.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.45 no.10
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• pp.579-583
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• 2008

A porous $Al_2O_3$, scaffold coated with tricalcium phosphate(TCP) was fabricated by replica method using polyurethane(PU) foam as a fugitive material. Successive coatings of $Al_2O_3$ and hydroxyapatite(HAp) were applied via dip coating onto polyurethane foam, which has a slender and well interconnected network. A porous structure was obtained after sequentially burning out the foam and then sintering at $1500^{\circ}C$. The HAp phase was changed to TCP phase at high temperature. The scaffold showed excellent interconnected porosity with pore sizes ranging from $300{\sim}700{\mu}m$ in diameter. The inherent well interconnected structural feature of PU foam remained intact in the fabricated porous scaffold, where the PU foam material was entirely replaced by $Al_2O_3$ and TCP through a consecutive layering process. Thickness of the $Al_2O_3$ base and the TCP coating was about $7{\sim}10{\mu}m$ each. The TCP coating was homogeneously dispersed on the surface of the $Al_2O_3$ scaffold.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.523-539
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• 2017

Clay soils are typical for their swelling properties upon absorption of water during rains and development of cracks during summer time owing to the profile desorption of water through the inter-connected soil pores by water vapour diffusion leading to evaporation. This type of unstable soil phenomenon by and large poses a serious threat to the strength and stability of structures when rest on such type of soils. Even as lime and cement are extensively used for stabilization of clay soils it has become imperative to find relatively cheaper alternative materials to bring out the desired properties within the clay soil domain. In the present era of catastrophic environmental degradation as a side effect to modernized manufacturing processes, industrialization and urbanization the creative idea would be treating the waste products in a beneficial way for reuse and recycling. Bottom ash and ecosand are construed as a waste product from cement industry. An optimal combination of bottom ash-eco sand can be thought of as a viable alternative to stabilize the clay soils by means of an effective dispersion dynamics associated with the inter connected network of pore spaces. A CATIA model was created and imported to ANSYS Fluent to study the dispersion dynamics. Ion migration from the bottom ash-ecosand pile was facilitated through natural formation of cracks in clay soil subjected to atmospheric conditions. Treated samples collected at different curing days from inner and outer zones at different depths were tested for, plasticity index, Unconfined Compressive Strength (UCS), free swell index, water content, Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC), pH and ion concentration to show the effectiveness of the method in improving the clay soil.

• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.163-167
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• 2001

A bulk porous $CaZrO_3/MgO$ composite with plantinum nano-dispersion was synthesized in air atmosphere through the combination of several in situ reactions, including the pyrolysis of $PtO_2$. A mixture of $CaMg(CO_3)_2$(dolomite), $ZrO_2$, $PtO_2$ and LiF (0.5 wt%, as an additive) was cold isostatically pressed at 200 MPa and sintered at $1100^{\circ}C$ for 2 h. The porous $CaZrO_3/MgO/Pt$ composite ($CaZrO_3/MgO$ : Pt=99 : 1 in volume) had a uniformly open-porous structure (porosity: 56%) with three-dimensional (3-D) network and a narrow pore-size distribution, similarly to the porous $CaZrO_3/MgO$ composites reported before. Catalytic Properties (viz., NO direct decomposition and NO reduction by $C_2H_4$) of the $CaZrO_3/MgO/Pt$ composite were investigated up to $900^{\circ}C$. In the absence of oxygen, the NO conversion rate reached ~52% for the direct decomposition and ~100% for the reduction by $C_2H_4$, respectively. The results suggest the possibility of the porous composite as a multifunctional filter, i.e., simultaneous hot gas-filtering and $de-NO_x$ in one component.