REFRACTORIES

REFRACTORIES
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 Properties of Refractories
Chemical Inertness
• Refractories must be inert to slags,ashes and gases
formed at the furnace.
• Acidity and Basicity of the by-products formed should be
considered while selecting refractories.

Thermal expansion
• Solids expand on heating, so refractories which expand
and contract minimum is chosen.
• Repeated process makes them brittle.

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Porosity
• Pores are formed in refractories during manufacture.
• They react with slags or gases and decrease their life.
• A good refractory should contain least number of pores.
Strength (or) Refractoriness under load
• They must be able to withstand heavy load at high
temperature without breaking
Eg: Alumina gradually softens, but with heavy
load it collapses. Silica can bear good load without
breaking.

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Dimensional stability
• When a substances is heated to high temperature, its
resistance to changes in dimensions is called the
dimensional stability.
• These maybe reversible or irreversible dimensional
changes and are also due to allotropic modifications.
Resistance to abrasion
• This is a very important property as it increases the life of
refractory material.
• It should be maximum for a good refractory so that it
won’t be abraded by hard charge, flue gases.

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Texture
• Light text bricks or more resistant to sudden changes
in temperature due to their light weight and large
porosity.
• But they are more susceptible to abrasion due to low
crushing strength.
• Heavy textured which are less resistant to sudden
temperature rise and less susceptible to abrasion

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 COMMON MATERIALS AND USES
Silica Bricks
• They contain 92%- 95% SiO2 and 2%lime as bonding
material. They are yellowish in colour with 25% pores.
• They can withstand a load of 3.5 kg/cm2 upto 1500-
1600°C .
• They are used for making roofs of open-hearth furnace,
steel making furnaces ,roofs of electric furnaces, glass
furnace and also in by- product Coke ovens.

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Fire clay bricks
• They're manufactured from fire-clay Al2O3 to SiO2.2H2O
with calcined fireclay.
• They’re light yellow coloured, fusible at 1350°C under a
load of 2kg/cm2.
• They are widely used as a refractory bricks as they are
cheap and find many applications in ovens, crucible
furnace ,blast furnaces

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Cermets
• They’re having both ceramic and metals to have high
refractoriness of ceramics and high thermal conductivity
of metals.
• Refractory materials like carbides of Mo, Zr, W and
metals like Fe, Al, Cr are mixed and fabricated by powder
metallurgy normally contains 80% of ceramic materials
and 20 percentage of metals
• They are used in rocket, jet engine parts, spinning tools
for hot metals and hot forging dies