Water has been an integral component of ceramics processing for millennia, imparting clay with just the right plasticity to be coiled, pinched, thrown, and rolled into traditional pottery forms.

With the emergence of new advanced ceramic materials and technologies, however, commercial processing of ceramics using nonaqueous mediums is becoming more common. This trend is driven by drawbacks associated with processing in water, including the tendency of water to chemically react with certain powders, the inability to dissolve specific (i.e., nonpolar) additives, and the medium’s volatility (i.e., evaporation over time).^1,2