Fabrication of Fe-Cr-Al Porous Metal with Sintering Temperature and Times

Abstract The porous metals are known as relatively excellent characteristic such as large surface area, light, lowerheat capacity, high toughness and permeability. The Fe-Cr-Al alloys have high corrosion resistance, heat resistance andchemical stability for high temperature applications. And then many researches are developed the Fe-Cr-Al porous met-als for exhaust gas filter, hydrogen reformer catalyst support and chemical filter. In this study, the Fe-Cr-Al porous met-als are developed with Fe-22Cr-6Al(wt) powder using powder compaction method. The mean size of Fe-22Cr-6Al(wt)powders is about 42.69 µm. In order to control pore size and porosity, Fe-Cr-Al powders are sintered at 1200~1450 o Cand different sintering maintenance as 1~4 hours. The powders are pressed on disk shapes of 3 mm thickness usinguniaxial press machine and sintered in high vacuum condition. The pore properties are evaluated using capillary flowporometer. As sintering temperature increased, relative density is increased from 73% to 96% and porosity, pore size aredecreased from 27 to 3.3%, from 3.1 to 1.8 µm respectively. When the sintering time is increased, the relative densityis also increased from 76.5% to 84.7% and porosity, pore size are decreased from 23.5% to 15.3%, from 2.7 to 2.08 µmrespectively. Keywords: Porous metal, Fe-Cr-Al alloy, Sintering Temperature, Porosity, Pore size