Stabilising zirconia aqueous suspensions using commercial polyvalent electrolyte solutions

This paper describes a study of the stability of various aqueous zirconia H SY-8 (Tosoh, Holland) suspensions. The stability is achieved by utilising t wo commercially available dispersants, namely 'Aluminon' (aurintricarboxyli c acid ammonium salt, Fluka Chemicals UK) and 'Tiron' (4-5-dihydroxy-1,3-be nzenedisulfonic acid disodium salt, Fluka Chemicals, UK). Rheological, elec trophoresis, sedimentation and adsorption measurement have been performed, and are reported, in order to investigate and characterise the stability of these suspensions. A good agreement is reported between the different tech niques which identifies the optimum concentration of the corresponding disp ersant; that is the condition which provides the most effective degree of s ustained particle dispersion. The results for these zirconia suspensions ar e compared with those of an alumina AES-II (Mandoval Ltd, Surrey, UK). (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Limited. All rights reserved.