Sintering and Properties of Calcia as a Refractory Material

Abstract

The investigation is focused on the sintering of calcia in single stage and double stage process from natural source limestone and evaluation of its properties like bulk density, apparent porosity, hydration resistance and microstructure in relation with sintering temperature. The result showed that bulk density increases and apparent porosity decreases with sintering temperature in both single and double stage process. In single stage process, maximum densification was 79.4 percent whereas it maximised to 90.74 percent in double stage process at 16500C. Hydration resistance of sintered calcia increases with densification as well as increase of grain size. With increasing apparent porosity hydration gain increases due to enhancement of water movement through the interconnected space followed by adsorption and chemical reaction. Double stage sintering process develops dense microstructure as compared single stage sintering process.