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Crucibles, or Transfer Ladles, are used to transport liquid aluminium from the potroom to cast house furnaces at primary smelters, or from melting to holding furnaces at secondary aluminium production sites. Vesuvius can provide different lining solutions, depending on customer requirements.
Customer requirements to Crucibles, or Transfer ladles, can vary significantly due to operational goals and conditions at each particular site. Primary smelters might prefer ladle design which would allow maximum temperature loss between potroom and cast house to minimize need of cooling metal additions to reach casting temperatures. Other Aluminium producers, vice versa, want the ladle to contain as much heat as possible during transportation. Each customer would have a target ladle shell temperature requirements, specific to that customer. Finally, crucible cleaning and tapping practices would impact life of a crucible lining and determine wear patterns.
But whatever the customer need is, Vesuvius can offer a solution, including:
Non-wetting castable lining (typically, Alugard® mixes) to gain useful volume and service life (vs brick lining) while maintaining allowed shell temperature
Precast bottoms to address aggressive cleaning practices (entire precast crucible lining is also possible)
“Know-how” to address failures (erosion from the siphoning process, aggressive cleaning practices, excessive cold metal formation around tapping spout, etc.)
Materials with coarser aggregates or SiC additions
Material selection based on customer process (primary or secondary route)
Reviewing design of tapping spouts, etc.
If the customer can not switch to castable Crucible lining for technical and / or operational reasons, Vesuvius offers STEIN* and NETTLE* dense alumina firebricks for a good economic ladle lining with reasonable aluminium resistance and good strength for easy maintenance.
Do you have questions about Vesuvius products for Crucibles? Any other questions? Contact us.