The evaluation of the rheological properties of suspensions is an important step in the ceramic slurries development. Mainly in wet processing, the rheological factor can be a limitation to the employment of determined raw material as well as the deflocculant agent. In this sense, the integrated approach of triaxial ceramics formulation and the mixture design come as an important aid to decrease the number of experiments necessary to determine the optimum properties of a system, which can be physical or rheological properties. The present work is directed towards to study the deflocculation of triaxial ceramic slurries (clay/feldspar/quartz) obtained from the mixture design, through the determination of a mathematical model that represents the ideal deflocculant concentration presented by each ceramic composition of the triaxial diagram. Aqueous suspensions (55% solids content) were prepared, using dehydrated sodium silicate (1.3 silica modulus) as deflocculant agent. Deflocculation curves were obtained. The results showed that the increase on clay mineral fraction lead the suspensions to higher deflocculant consumption.
ceramic processing; sodium silicate; mixture design
