WHAT IF WE DID NOT HAVE TO DRY TROUGH AND RUNNERS CASTABLES ANYMORE?

The constant increase in demand has imposed to the steel industry an intense search for high productivity. Following this trend, the use of monolithic refractories is growing significantly, allowing shorter installation times and consequently greater availability of equipment. The main disadvantage of this class of material is the need for long drying times during its application. In this work, an entirely novel binder system for monolithic refractories is proposed, aiming at the reduction and potential elimination of the drying step during trough and runners repairs. For this purpose, this binder system was evaluated in an Al2O3-SiC-C castable and compared with the two most used commercial binders: calcium aluminate cement and colloidal silica. The results showed that this system successfully produced a permeable gel-like microstructure, which led to an excellent drying behavior, even in the most aggressive heating conditions, without damaging the product’s mechanical, oxidation and corrosion resistance. In the field, runners have already operated successfully using the new binder without any drying step, maintaining their performance with the benefit of a drastic reduction in repair time. Such positive results highlighted that the use of such exclusive binder could lead to the avoidance of up to 500 tons