Design, Properties, Damage and Lifetime of Refractory Ceramics

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue is dedicated to the latest research and development in refractory ceramics in the large fields of raw materials, design, properties, damage, and lifetime, in terms of thermochemical and thermomechanical behavior.

Refractories are subject to degradations in most applications. The industrial domains concerned are many and varied:

• Traditional sectors involved in the high-temperature production of materials, such as the steel industry, non-ferrous metallurgy, cement works, glass, ceramic and raw materials industries, constantly looking to improve their manufacturing processes and energy efficiency;
• Petrochemicals, electricity production from fossil fuels or emerging energy applications;
• The environment, and more specifically the domains relating to waste treatment and recovery (thermal treatment of wastewater sludge, vitrification of asbestos, HWITR: Household waste incineration treatment residue and IWITR: Industrial waste incineration treatment residue, etc.);
• Thermal and chemical sectors: Boilers, furnaces, evaporators, gasification reactors, treatment facilities, etc.;
• The aeronautic, space, and arms industries, which use ceramic thermal barriers to confine heat and withstand the corrosive products generated by propulsion engines, but also to create the external coatings of spacecraft, which must withstand overheating when re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.

To assess the damage resistance of a refractory in a defined environment, the characteristics of the material must be known, and the effect of the properties on operational performance must be evaluated. This complex approach requires in-depth expertise.

Thorough understanding of damage mechanisms, as with refractory usage properties, requires knowledge of how these materials are manufactured, starting with their constituent raw materials.

The combination of different approaches, i.e., industrial appraisals associated with experimental laboratory methods and digital modeling, is very useful for taking a fresh look at the issue of refractory damage, giving rise to approaches which are completely different from traditional empirical ones.

Effective experimental techniques, combined with powerful digital tools, currently facilitate the acquisition of information which cannot be accessed directly (e.g., phase changes). The use of thermodynamic and thermomechanical simulation tools considers many parameters and the effect of the environment. The “Achilles’ heel” is without question the difficulty in accessing the data on the behavior of materials in relation to temperature. There is often a lack of data and kinetic coefficients.

Topics of interest (among others) include:

- Raw materials;
- Castables;
- Design of refractories (bricks, castables);
- Advanced laboratory experiments;
- Thermomechanical behavior;
- Corrosion;
- Recycling and environment aspects;
- Education.

Prof. Jacques Poirier
Guest Editor

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