Development of Metallurgical Refractories with Indian Raw Materials - Pilot Plant Studies

Refractories play a vital role in the development of metallurgical industries. With rapid industrialisation in the country, demand for refractories is ever increasing and has been estimated at about one million tons per annum by the end of the 2nd Five Year Plan. The present produc-tion is of the order of 4,60,000 tons of refractories per annum. The gap between the present capacity and demand is largely being met by imports from other countries, thereby draining lot of valuable foreign exchange. Though there is no dearth of raw materials for refractory manufacture in our country, success of our refractory production prog-ramme depends on detailed and systematic investigation of various raw materials and their processing methods, effecting improvements in the quality of the products manufactured at present and development of compositions and processes for new products hereto not manufactured in the country. With this end in view, indigenous refractory raw materials have been scientifically and systematically investigated in this Laboratory. In all cases, before translating such laboratory efforts into commercial scale production, it is necessary that pilot plant studies should be carried out in order to obtain operating; data which can be extrapolated with confidence in industrial practice. To meet this and a refractories pilot plant is being set up in this Laboratory. The projects which have reached a pilot plant stage of investigation are enume-rated below: (i) Dense mullite and hot face insulation refractories from bladed kyanite. (ii) Zircon and sillimanite refractories from Travancore beach sands. (iii) Magnesite refractories from Almorah magnesite. (iv) Forsterite refractories from magnesium silicate rocks. (v) Chemically bonded and metal clad mixed basic refractories