Abstract
Induced porosity of fired clay using melonhusk to temperatures of 650, 700, 750, 800, 850, 900 and 1000 OC came under interest in this study. Samples of two colors-brown and white, were tested for porosity and bulk density levels before and after firing. Samples were prepared into cores 20mm radius 50mm height and tested for pre-fired porosity; batch-mixed with 500µm melon husk at 0%, 15%, 20% and 25%, prepared with 5% grog into cubes 50x50x50mm and fired in a gas kiln for post-fired porosity tests. Pre-fired porosities were 53.75% and 50.34%,and bulk densities 1.225 g/cm3 and 1.315 g/cm3for brown and white clay, and their1000 OC post-fired porosity marginal valueswere25.99 ± 10.05 %, 45.475 ± 9.705 %, 60.535 ± 1.165 % and 62.01 ± 1.36 % at 0 wt. %, 15 wt. %, 20 wt. % and 25 wt. % melon husk premix respectively. It was concluded that premixing clay with melon husk biomass at minor increments to 20 % enhances porosity in porous ceramics fired at 1000 OC to a value twice that of homogenous fired clay.
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Ethical Approval
Not applicable
Data Availability
The datasets used in this study are openly available at [repository link] and the source code is available on GitHub at [GitHub link].
Funding
This work did not receive any external funding.
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