Porous ceramics have been applied in a broad range of technological purposes, such as dust collectors, thermo-acoustic insulators and burners. In the biotechnology and biomedicine areas, porous ceramics have been applied as reactors in fermentation processes and as implants, respectively. Besides that, they can also be used in the micro filtration process of liquids and emulsions, such as fuel purification through separation of water from oil, and in the separation of proteins of the milk. The objective of this work is the production of porous ceramics tubes for fuel micro filtration. The first stage of the research was the production of porous ceramics by colloidal processing and evaluation of its final physical, fluid dynamic and mechanical properties. In a second stage the performance of these ceramic tubes during the micro filtration of fuel was analysed. The final properties of porous ceramics were evaluated according to the changes in the composition and sintering conditions. After firing, the ceramic tubes had their porosity in the range of 48 to 65%-vol, narrow distribution with pore diameters bellow than 1 µm and constants of Darcian (k1) and nonDarcian (k2) permeability of 10-15 m² and 10-11 m, respectively. These properties are similar to the commercial imported products and therefore these ceramics have a great potential of application in micro filtration processes.
porous alumina; ceramic processing; micro filtration
