Durandal 60: a Special Range of Andalusite for High Performance Refractories and Ceramics

摘要

Andalusite is a well-known source of mullite in fired refractories and provides very useful properties such as high refractoriness under load, creep resistance and thermal shock resistance. Such properties often require the use of pure sintered mullite or even fused mullite. In several applications such as kiln furniture for technical ceramics, the surface aspect of the refractory is very critical and a light homogeneous colour without spots is required. In order to satisfy the requirement of this market, Damrec has developed a new range of grades of andalusite where the specifications are linked to the aspect of the final product. In order to supply a very clean andalusite, a pre-selection of the initial ore and a special treatment has been implemented. These operations enable Damrec to guarantee an iron content of less than 0.45%. In order to achieve this result, a quality control procedure closely linked to the customer use of the material was also set up. This new range of andalusite is presently applied worldwide and particularly in Asia.