Effect of Batch Dissimilarity on Permeability of Stacked Ceramic Foam Filters and Incompressible Fluid Flow: Experimental and Numerical Investigation

Abstract

Ceramic foam filters (CFFs) are used to remove inclusions and/or solid particles from molten metal. In general, the molten metal poured on the top of a CFF should reach a certain height to form the pressure (metal head) required to prime the filter. For estimating the required metal head and obtaining the permeability coefficients of the CFFs, permeability experiments are essential. Recently, electromagnetic priming and filtration of molten aluminum with low and high grades of CFF, i.e., 30, 50 and 80 pore per inch (PPI) CFFs, have been introduced. Since then, there has been interest in exploring the possibility of obtaining further inclusion entrapment and aluminum refinement by using electromagnetic force to prime and filter with stacked CFFs. The successful execution of such trials requires a profound understanding concerning the permeability parameters of the stacked filters. Such data were deemed not to exist prior to this study. As a result, this study presents experimental findings of permeability measurements for stacks of three 30, three 50 and three 80 PPI commercial alumina CFFs from different industrial batches and compares the findings to numerically modelled data as well as previous research works. Both experimental and numerical findings showed a good agreement with previous results. The deviation between the experimentally and numerically obtained data lies in the range of 0.4 to 6.3%.