There are three main driving forces for the development and change of refractory materials: maintaining and improving the quality of glass; the economic requirements for glass furnaces to make the furnace run longer, and the impact and influence of the adoption of pure oxygen combustion systems.
The word "current" can be interpreted as months or even weeks for changes in the electronics and computer industries, but when it comes to the development and application of refractory materials in the glass industry, it can easily be interpreted as five or ten years. Based on this time concept, we will review and discuss the changes that have occurred in the "current" in the latter field (at a more conservative pace).
There are three main driving forces for the change and development of refractory materials. The first is the demand of glass manufacturers to at least maintain and usually improve the quality of glass. The second is the economic requirements of glass furnaces to make the furnace run longer, and the third is the impact and influence of pure oxygen combustion systems. These three requirements usually determine the selection of improved refractory materials when repairing the furnace. These driving forces also prompt glass manufacturers to use improved refractory products when maintaining the furnace and adopt new technologies for large-scale overhaul during the operation cycle.
Melt-cast alumina bricks have established their application in the top of the melting pool, mainly in pure oxygen combustion pool furnaces for melting high-quality glass. Before the advent of pure oxygen combustion technology, only β-alumina bricks were used for the upper structure of the melting pool, and no melt-cast alumina bricks were used for the melting pool top. Today, melt-cast products of both β-alumina and α-β alumina are used in part or all of the top of pure oxygen combustion pool furnaces for the production of color televisions (screens and cones), float glass and borosilicate glass. Melt-cast AZS bricks can generally be used up to 1600℃ or 1650℃ (depending on the glass product), while furnace roofs made of electric-fused alumina bricks can be successfully operated at 1700℃. This creates better conditions and greater flexibility for glass manufacturers in the production of refractory glass.
For many years, melt-cast AZS furnace roofs have successfully withstood the test of cooling and reheating to enable them to use multiple operating cycles. Now that a little experience has been accumulated, cooling and reheating of fused alumina furnace roofs have been successfully implemented, and they have shown economically stronger vitality when used for two or more operating cycles. The results of observations of fused alumina furnace roofs in use (hot observations and shutdown observations) have shown that these materials are both chemically and mechanically stable. This is the earliest observational study of this type of masonry, because at that time there were no reference materials for fused alumina and no empirical basis for its application in furnace roofs.
High-chrome refractory products were mainly used in the past for reinforcing glass furnaces and to a lesser extent in insulating glass tank furnaces. Now high-chrome bricks are increasingly being used in some soda-lime glass tank furnaces. Their main use is no longer limited to all or part of the flow holes, but also for end walls and to a limited extent for the corner bricks of the charging port. Due to the composition of high-chrome bricks, they have a potential coloring risk, so that high-chrome products are generally incompatible with very "white" glass. Initially, such products were mainly used for colored glass, but now high-chrome products have also been successfully used in transparent container glass tank furnaces. The amount of high chrome products used in a glass melting furnace depends largely on the design of its flow hole, the cooling of the flow hole, the daily output of the pool furnace, and the operation of the furnace. A glass manufacturer may use high chrome bricks for all cover plates plus the end walls of the melting pool. The flow hole built with high chrome bricks offers the potential to increase the life of the furnace because this material has at least twice the corrosion resistance of most glasses than fused AZS bricks. However, some design and operating parameters are different from fused AZS bricks and need to be discussed with the supplier.
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