ALTRON Outlasts Conventional Materials in Wear Applications by 3X.

Blasch Precision Ceramics, Inc. announces the development of a new grade of silicon carbide, ALTRON^TM alumina bonded silicon carbide. The precision cast shapes outlast nitride bonded SiC brick and wear-resistant alloys in mining, power generation and cement processing applications.

Field trials in hydrocyclone applications in mining and cement plants have shown more than three times the life of conventional nitride bonded silicon carbide components. ASTM C704 abrasion resistance testing has verified this.

The new composition creates a unique interaction between constituent materials, yielding a body with refractory-like densities, which allow the shapes to be thermal-cycled repeatedly without damage due to thermal shock, but with a very closed porosity, normally found in fully dense, advanced ceramic bodies.

The new material can be formed and processed like conventional nitride bonded silicon carbides, but exhibits greater abrasion resistance, in line with much more expensive and difficult to form advanced ceramic materials.

Applications for this composition include: slurry, ore, ash, coal, coke and catalyst processing and transport; in high temperature, abrasive and corrosive environments. Typical components include pipe linings, elbows, burners, valves, cones, vortex finders, nozzles, micronizers and pump components.

Less than 2mm wear after 3 months continual service processing 50 tons per day cement