Alumina is an advanced refractory material with superior strength, toughness, and wear resistance properties. It can be easily formed into different shapes and sizes using various consolidation and sintering processes.
Alumina is inert and impervious to acids and alkalis at high temperatures. Furthermore, it boasts impressive resistance against abrasion.
It is a crystalline material
Although its applications vary, alumina shares several common properties that make it well-suited to use across numerous fields. These include high mechanical strength, chemical resistance and electrical insulator. Alumina also boasts excellent refractoriness, wear resistance, good dielectric properties with low loss tangent values as well as being suitable for use in harsh corrosive environments.
Alumina is a chemical compound composed of aluminium and oxygen molecules. It occurs naturally as corundum, with certain conditions turning it into sapphire – ideal material for industrial and medical uses, while its high melting point and chemical inertness make it suitable as a refractory material in extreme temperature environments.
Alumina has an intricate crystal structure composed of hexagonal close-packed oxygen ions and two-thirds octahedral aluminium ions arranged hexagonally close together, and two-thirds octahedral aluminium ions that form strong hydrogen bonds with each other, giving this material extreme durability, strength, rigidity, and refractoriness properties.
When using alumina to produce ceramics, it must be ground into fine particles for consistent crystalline structure and improved performance. Furthermore, this process also improves surface quality while decreasing impurity levels within the final ceramic product.
To produce pure alumina, it is vitally important to minimize the presence of g-Al2O3. This water-soluble phase disrupts sintering processes and leads to runaway coarsening and agglomerates; its presence reduces efficiency as well as creating dark colorations of ceramic products.
Alumina boasts superior mechanical strength and thermal stability, with its high melting point, good chemical inertness, resistance to abrasion and ease of shaping making it suitable for many different applications, from refractories and coatings to refractory applications and coatings. Alumina production also can include any number of additives to meet specific performance criteria – either improving its corrosion resistance or giving it distinctive color or optical properties.
It is brittle
Alumina is an extremely hard and strong crystalline material found naturally in many forms such as sapphire. Additionally, alumina has industrial uses as an abrasive or ceramic engineering component. Alumina stands out among oxides as having high strength resistance against thermal and chemical wear as well as dispersing impact energy in armour technology applications.
At elevated temperatures, most forms of alumina revert back to its hexagonal alpha phase for maximum strength and stiffness, creep resistance, good dielectric properties (for converting from DC to GHz frequencies) and low loss tangent. Alumina’s structure consists of oxygen and aluminium atoms in an interlocked cubic matrix with aluminium ions filling two thirds of octahedral interstices while oxygen fills only one-third. Furthermore, due to strong ionic interatomic bondings between molecules it has high strength and stiffness when exposed to higher temperatures. This gives it unparalleled strength and stiffness among all crystalline aluminium oxides as well as being highly refractory due its strong interatomic bondings between particles.
Although brittle, alumina is an incredibly resilient material which has many applications. Its hardness and resistance to chemical wear make it ideal for the abrasive industry while its low melting point and temperature stability play an integral role in ceramic manufacturing processes. Alumina’s electrical stability also make it an attractive material choice for insulators and capacitors.
Aluminium cations exist as the hexaaqua cation in water solutions and when dehydrated can form aluminium hydroxide precipitate that can be used to clarify water, while its soluble form, Alumina hydroxide precipitate can also be used for cleaning glassware and is so common in nature it has no toxic effects on animals or plants.
Researchers recently demonstrated that alumina is considerably more ductile than silica glass. They observed that structures with thick walls to tube diameter ratios above 2:1 were broken apart when compressed while thinner structures survived compression. Transmission electron microscopy enabled researchers to analyze this difference; tight packing of atoms in an alumina network allowed it to switch places more readily than with defect-free silica glasses.
It is chemically inert
Alumina is an extremely hard and chemical inert material with many uses due to its extreme hardness and chemical inertness, acting as both an excellent insulator against thermal shocks, corrosion-resistance properties, and being versatile enough to form into various shapes and sizes.
Alumina is an exceptional abrasive material used in grinding wheels, sandpaper and polishing compounds to provide precise grinding and smoothing of metals and other materials. Alumina pigment extenders add color stability and durability to painted surfaces as well.
The Alumina ceramic family of materials represents the world market share leader. It features high electrical conductivity, mechanical and thermal properties maintained at high temperatures, resistance to corrosion, chemical attack and wear resistance as well as wide applications across many fields of industry.
Alumina is composed of aluminium and oxygen and has a melting point of 2,050 degrees Celsius, making it extremely thermal resistant. Alumina can be produced via extrusion and powder sintering; however, its production yield is relatively low due to the difficulty associated with procuring high-purity aluminium as well as producing pure oxide oxide products.
Aluminum oxide is a long-lasting and chemically inert material, resistant to attacks by acids and alkalis. Additionally, its electrical insulating properties make it suitable for electrical wiring insulation applications and its high strength/stiffness characteristics make it suitable for ballistic armor manufacturing applications. Aluminum oxide products used include valves, seal rings and components used with chemical pumps as well as valves designed specifically to handle chemicals abrasion resistant components used by these pumps.
Alumina is an outstanding reflector of light at wavelengths between 500 and 2000 nanometers, making it an excellent component for laser reflectors. Aside from being reflective, Alumina also exhibits low particle generation rates and is vacuum tight – qualities which make it well suited to semiconductor chambers and fixtures, as well as being used to fabricate pumping chambers for flash lamps or continuous wave lasers.
As sodium contamination of alumina is the main source of cracking and densification, it’s often added during manufacturing to promote lower temperature sintering. Gallium also is an important contaminant found in alumina; its use as the key element of Bayer solution has resulted in its accumulation in the material during sintering process, contributing to high gallium content levels within it.
It is refractory
High alumina refractory bricks offer excellent thermal properties and can withstand tough conditions, making them suitable for many applications such as ceramic kilns, blast furnaces and glass tanks. Their chemical resistance makes them highly durable; these bricks can withstand corrosion by many acids and alkalies such as hydrofluoric acid, sodium hydroxide and ammonium perchlorate corrosion attacks. Alumina bricks are created using finely crushed, calcined material which has then been bound together using high pressure sintering process for ultimate performance.
Refractory bricks are created using raw material in various shapes such as squares, rectangles and rounds, which are then sintered in a rotating or sintering drum at temperatures ranging between 1500-1800 deg C. Sintering plays an essential part in producing high quality alumina refractories; its temperature and duration influence particle size, shape and chemical composition of finished products.
These refractory materials typically feature high alumina content of over 45% and can be manufactured into various forms including slip casting and injection molding, before being fired in gas-fired kilns. Once fired, their products can be tested according to ASTM tests for open porosity, water absorption, apparent density and mechanical properties like four point bend strength.
High-alumina refractory bricks are widely utilized across industries that require heat insulation. Common applications for them are in blast furnaces, ceramic kilns, and tank furnaces as well as in applications requiring high abrasion resistance and thermal shock resistance.
Refractory oxides consist of various unary, binary, and ternary ceramic compounds made primarily from alumina. Refractory ceramics are extremely durable materials used widely in structural and insulating applications and can withstand extremes in temperature as well as chemicals or abrasive substances without degradation.
Phosphoric acid has an extremely low melting point and interacts slowly with alumina to form alumina hydroxide and aluminum hydroxide, before dehydrating to produce alumina orthophosphate at high temperature, similar to silica and quartz structures and giving rise to Berlinite, Tridymite, and Cristobalite refractories that provide excellent slag penetration resistance and high durability.