Rheological Studies of Silica-Tragacanth Suspensions

Abstract

Formation of a concentrated solid/liquid suspension, as an industrial intermediate, is often necessary in many industrial manufacturing processes, particularly for paints, paper coating, ceramics, catalysts, etc. Polysaccharides have been widely used for the control of the stability of suspensions. In this paper, various rheological parameters; such as viscosity—shear rate, shear stress—shear rate, storage and loss modulus frequency at various temperatures, and strain stress; have been measured for different compositions of silica powder in water with 0.3 wt% tragacanth gum as a phase stabilizer.

Keywords:

• rheology
• silica
• slurry
• suspension
• tragacanth gum
• viscosity