Porous Ceramic Questions
General
Question: What kind of ceramic does Refractron make?
Answer: Refractron engineers and manufactures a range of technical or industrial products including porous and dense (structural) ceramics.
Question: What are advanced or technical ceramics?
Answer: This is a way to differentiate technical, advanced or engineered ceramics for industrial applications for other ceramics like white ware and dinner ware and hobby ceramics.
Question: Where are technical or engineered ceramics used?
Answer: Typically Industrial Applications requiring temperature or corrosion resistance. Industries include chemical process, petrochemical, food, beverage, and mining.
Question: Where would I use a Refractron ceramic component?
Answer: Refractron ceramic components are used for applications requiring temperature, corrosion and wear resistance and as an alternative for metals, plastics and other materials. Specifically porous ceramic is for filtration and diffusion and the dense/ structural ceramic is for wear and corrosion resistance in process applications.
Question: How do you make your ceramic components and products?
Answer: Refractron uses a variety of processes to manufacture parts all basically include mixing, forming and firing at high temperature.
Question: Are samples available?
Answer: Many products are custom made but some parts are available for a nominal charge as prototypes for trial components for testing. Contact Refractron Customer Service or Sales.
Question: How do I know what to order?
Answer: See the questions below on Porous or Dense/ Structural Ceramics, fill out an "Application Inquiry Form" or the specific product or application info on the website or Contact Refractron Customer Service.
Porous Ceramic
Question: What is porous ceramic?
Answer: Refractron porous ceramic materials are deliberately engineered to have an open pore structure with a network of interconnected pores, making the ceramic permeable to gas and liquid. Porous ceramic bonds grains of material like our standard Aluminum Oxide to form a porous body that is 40-50% porous with a controlled, uniform pore structure.
Question: What are the pore sizes available for these products?
Answer: Pore sizes are from 0.25 micron to 90 microns
Question: What is the difference between pore size and porosity?
Answer: Pore size is the opening or hole size in the porous material measure in microns and porosity is the amount of open pore volume in the material. Refractron’s porous ceramic all have porosity in the 40-50% range but with different pore sizes available from 0.25 micron to 90 microns.
Question: What is a micron?
Answer: One (1) micron equals 0.00003937” (Note: the smallest particle you can see, by eye, is in the range of 30 to 40 microns)
Question: What is the porous ceramic material?
Answer: The standard material is Aluminum Oxide. Other special materials available are Alumina and Silicon Carbide
Question: How are porous ceramic products made?
Answer: Raw materials and additives are mixed, formed and fired to the size, shape and specifications required.
Question: Where would you use it? What applications?
Answer: Typical uses for porous ceramics include applications in filtration (solid particulate removal), diffusion (gas-gas, gas-liquid, and liquid-liquid mixing), liquid dispersion (wicking) and Fluidizing / Pneumatic conveying.
Question: Can porous ceramics be cleaned and reused?
Answer: Yes, depending on the contaminant porous ceramic can be cleaned by a variety of methods making them an excellent value. Like-new performance can often be restored by exposing the ceramic materials to high temperatures or corrosive cleaning treatments, which will destroy contaminants, but leave the ceramic intact. Porous ceramics are found in many applications where the actual operating conditions are very mild, but the cleaning process would destroy a non-ceramic material. (See our Suggestions for Cleaning Sheet in the Technical Library Section)
Question: What information is required to make a quote?
Answer: We need to know size, shape, specs, quantity, what is in use and a target price. (Send us the details or Fill out the inquiry on the website or contact the factory)
Dense / Structural Ceramic
Question: What is Zirconia?
Answer: Zirconia is the oxide of zirconium metal, and is often called zirconium oxide or zirconium dioxide. It melts at temperatures over 2,700 °C and in a usable form, has an elastic modulus and thermal expansion coefficient similar to steel. Zirconia can exist in any of three different crystal structures: monoclinic, tetragonal, and cubic. The phase that zirconia takes on depends on its temperature, purity, and processing history. To make a usable form of zirconia, a small percentage of a stabilizing oxide, such as yttria (yttrium oxide) or magnesia (magnesium oxide) is added to prevent destructive phase changes and to develop the desired material properties.
Question: Where would you use dense/ structural ceramics?
Answer: Refractron’s Zirconia structural ceramic is engineered for outstanding mechanical properties. Our Zirconia ceramics exhibit the highest strength and fracture toughness as well as the highest resistance to wear, abrasion, and corrosion of any of the advanced ceramic materials. These materials solve wear problems when other wear resistant materials such as tungsten carbide do not meet the performance requirements.
Question: What materials are available?
Answer: Refractron specializes in high purity Zirconia materials including:
- Mg-PSZ (Magnesia Partially Stabilized Zirconia) is processed at extremely high temperatures, using magnesia (MgO) as a stabilizer making it the best for fracture toughness.
- Y-TZP (Yttria Tetragonal Zirconia Polycrystal) is a Refractron specialty material for critical structural ceramic applications.
Question: What shapes or parts to you make?
Answer: Tubes, Discs, Rods, Bars, Plates and Balls are all available in different sizes.
Question: Can the dense ceramics be machined?
Answer: Specialty diamond grinding tools are used and Refractron can supply blanks or may be able to quote the finish ground component depending on size, shape and details.
Question: What information is required to make a quote?
Answer: We need to know size, shape, specs, quantity, what is in use and a target price. (Send us the details or Fill out the inquiry on the website or contact the factory)