A tray including a plate-shaped portion for arranging a plurality of prismatic honeycomb structures having an outer peripheral side surface and partition walls provided on an inner peripheral side of the outer peripheral side surface, the partition walls partitioning a plurality of cells forming flow paths from a first end surface to a second end surface, the plate-shaped portion including: a plurality of corrugated plate-shaped placing portions for placing the prismatic honeycomb structures with the outer peripheral side surface in contact with the placing portions; flat plate-shaped non-placing portions adjacent to each of the corrugated plate-shaped placing portions; and partition walls erected between adjacent corrugated plate-shaped placing portions to prevent the outer peripheral side surfaces of adjacent prismatic honeycomb structures from contacting each other.

A fluid heating component including: a porous body made of ceramics and formed with through channels through which a fluid passes, and a conductive coating layer disposed on a through channel surface of at least a part of each through channel, wherein the conductive coating layer is electrically connected, and is continuous.

A honeycomb structure includes a plurality of prismatic columnar shaped honeycomb segments; a bonding layer bonding side faces of the honeycomb segments; and a circumferential wall disposed to surround a honeycomb segment bonded body having the honeycomb segments arranged in a grid pattern and bonded with the bonding layer, wherein the honeycomb segments has a porous partition wall disposed to surround a plurality of cells, the cells in other than outermost circumference have a hexagonal shape in a section orthogonal to the cell extending direction, the honeycomb segments include first and second honeycomb segment, the second honeycomb segment is different from the first in at least one of: a shape in the section; a size; and an arrangement direction of the cells and an extended line of one diagonal line imaginarily depicted in the cells in the first honeycomb segment and that in the second are configured to be orthogonal.

A manufacturing method of a plugged honeycomb structure including a plugging material preparing step of mixing a ceramic raw material, a pore former, a thickener, an organic binder, a dispersing agent, and water and preparing the plugging material which is slurried, to form the plugging portions, wherein the plugging material preparing step includes: a powder mixing step of mixing the ceramic raw material, the pore former, the organic binder and the dispersing agent each of which is constituted of powder, at predetermined blend ratios, a thickener mixing step of adding and mixing the thickener to a powder mixture obtained by the powder mixing step, and a kneading step of adding the water to a thickener added mixture obtained by the thickener mixing step, to perform kneading.

A coated ceramic honeycomb body comprising a honeycomb structure comprising a matrix of intersecting porous walls forming a plurality of axially-extending channels, at least some of the plurality of axially-extending channels being plugged to form inlet channels and outlet channels, wherein a total surface area of the outlet channels is greater than a total surface area of the inlet channels, and wherein a catalyst is preferentially located within the outlet channels, and preferentially disposed on non-filtration walls of the outlet channels. Methods and apparatus configured to preferentially apply a catalyst-containing slurry to the outlet channels and non-filtration walls are provided, as are other aspects.

A composite sintered body contains a silicon phase and a cordierite phase. In the composite sintered body, I1/(I1+I2) is not smaller than 0.70 and not larger than 0.80, where I1 and I2 represent peak intensities of a (111) plane of silicon and a (110) plane of cordierite, respectively, which are obtained by the X-ray diffraction method. Further, in the composite sintered body, a median diameter of silicon particles, based on a volume standard, is not smaller than 9 μm.

A porous fired granulated body is formed by consolidating numerous alumina particles to each other while letting mainly interconnected pores remain in network form across an entire cross section of a granulated body particle. The pores have an inner diameter controlled by a droplet diameter of a pore forming agent and have numerous precipitated alumina crystals formed on inner surfaces thereof. Manufacture is performed by spraying the pore forming agent (emulsion) onto a raw material to form a coating layer of the pore forming agent on a surface of the raw material particle and controlling the inner diameter of the pores. A porous fired granulated body of alumina having a high specific surface area and having higher strength for the same specific surface area can thus be provided by a simple manufacturing method.

Methods use a catalytic composition built up from a ceramic material including a catalytic material and a first inorganic binder and a second inorganic binder and a catalytic structure made thereof. Preferably, the structure is made by a colloidal ceramic shaping technique. The structure is used for catalytic or ion exchange applications. The catalytic structures have excellent mechanical, physicochemical and catalytic properties.

A method of manufacturing a ceramic honeycomb structure by mixing a ceramic precursor batch composition having a median particle diameter less than or equal to about 10 μm and at least one starch-based pore former having a median particle diameter greater than or equal to about 10 μm. The method also includes forming a mixture of ceramic precursor batch composition and a starch-based pore former into a green ceramic structure having a web structure, and firing the green ceramic structure to yield a ceramic honeycomb structure.

A coated ceramic honeycomb body comprising a honeycomb structure comprising a matrix of intersecting porous walls forming a plurality of axially-extending channels, at least some of the plurality of axially-extending channels being plugged to form inlet channels and outlet channels, wherein a total surface area of the outlet channels is greater than a total surface area of the inlet channels, and wherein a catalyst is preferentially located within the outlet channels. and preferentially disposed on non-filtration walls of the outlet channels. Methods and apparatus configured to preferentially apply a catalyst-containing slurry to the outlet channels and non-filtration walls are provided, as are other aspects.