Alumina Tiles
A current misconception being perpetrated in the ceramic tile market place is that certain 98% or 96% alumina content tiles provide greater wear life and abrasion resistance than 92% or 85% content. Also when customers receive pricing on these tiles they find that they are comparable. Unfortunately the old adage that “you get what you pay for” is correct.
Superior wear life in alumina can be attributed to these basic characteristics:
- Individual alumina grains should be a fine size.
- Have an even distribution throughout the body.
- Glass matrix will have no porosity or crystallization.
- Full adhesion to each alumina grain within the tile.
- Tile density in relation to AL2O3 content.
- Matrix components used and mix ratio in combination with firing temperature
The low cost 98% or 96% alumina typically has a large grain size and inferior glass matrix structure. These problems are directly related to the firing temperatures and raw material specifications required to produce them. There are 99% AL2O3 refractory ceramics with relatively poor wear resistant properties.
The performance of this alumina in wear applications is not supported by technical knowledge or assumption that more is better. Production of fine grain 98% or 96% alumina is cost prohibitive for wear applications.
When comparing what we would consider to be good 94% AL2O3 specification ceramics with the one provided below we make the following observations:
| Good 94% | Specified | Multotec MP92 | |
| Density | 3.7 | 3.6 | 3.6 |
| Max U Temp | 1700 oC. | 1250 oC. | >1000 oC. |
The above should be sufficient to verify the inappropriateness of using alumina content only as a justification when trying to eliminate opposition / competitive suppliers.
Multotec supply what we consider to be a good 92% AL2O3 product with a MINIMUM of 92%, on average it is actually +/- 93% AL2O3 content.
In general it is difficult to justify the higher cost of “good standard” higher AL2O3 unless there is a particular corrosion resistance requirement which, once the offending corrosive products have been clearly identified, may also call for an adjustment to the matrix formulation.
An informed customer is beneficial to the market and we encourage you to review information relating to material specification and compare those of our competitors.