Assessment of humidity self-regulation functionality for ceramic tiles

Abstract

The development of ceramic tiles with humidity regulating capacity is a topic of great interest for the comfort of interior spaces. The humidity regulating capacity of fired specimens from five compositions used for porous ceramic products has been assessed and their microstructure has been characterised. The main novelty of the work consists of obtaining pieces with regulating functionality from common ceramic raw materials used in industrial practice, establishing a kinetic model and confirming the role of porosity and microstructure.

The results have shown that moisture adsorption and desorption curves fit very well to a pseudo-second order model. Additionally, it has been found that the humidity regulating capacity is not related to the total porosity, but it depends on the presence of mesopores in the structure of the pieces. Concerning the tested compositions, those containing gibbsite present higher regulating capacity as a consequence of their greater amount of mesopores.