Gas kiln with ceramic fibre lining

摘要

Up until the 1960s, in the highly developed industrialized countries, almost all ceramic kilns were built with refractory bricks (in Vietnam, bricked kilns are still the norm today). In kilns built from dense bricks with a high solids percentage, a large quantity of heat is necessary to heat up the kiln lining during each firing. As a result of the higher thermal conductivity of the solids compared to air, a considerable part of the energy is transported through the kiln wall to the outside and given off into the environment. In ceramic kilns heated with solid fuels such as coal, wood and oil, the ware must be fired together with kiln furniture (bats, saggars), which, for firing some products, often weighs up to 3...4 times that of the ware itself. Together with the quantity of heat that leaves the kiln through the smokestack, the overall energy loss is often so considerable that the "theoretically useful quantity of heat" only accounts for a small part of the energy generated by the fuels used, in many cases＜10％.