Energy and cost reduction with heat treatment of ceramics

Although cost pressure is not large at the moment, a drastic reduction of energy consumption during production of technical ceramics is advantageous to fulfill expectations of the market for more ecological products. Since the energy efficiency of present heat treatments of technical ceramics is very low, large improvements are possible. In the joint project ENITEC, amongst others, methods are developed to minimize energy consumption during the heat treatment of ceramics. A systematic approach has been suggested to identify optimum process parameters in the trade-off situation between energy consumption and production quality. It is based on a coupling between accurate in-situ measuring methods and computer simulations. In the remaining period of the ENITEC project, the efficiency of the methods will be improved to enable a fast transfer to other ceramic heat treatments. In addition to energy savings, higher throughput can be obtained by the new approach. Usually, the i ncrease of throughput has a large impact on production costs due to the amortization of furnaces. In the future sustainability will be profitable for the ceramic industry.