Recovery of Raw Materials from Ceramic Waste Materials for the Refractory Industry

Products of the refractory industry are key for the production of heavy industry goods such as steel and iron, cement, aluminum and glass. Corresponding industries are dependent on thermal processes to manufacture their products, which in turn would not be possible if there were no refractory materials, such as refractory bricks or refractory mixes. For the production of refractory materials, primary raw materials or semi-finished products such as corundum, bauxite or zircon are used. Industrial recycling of refractory raw materials would reduce dependencies, conserve resources and reduce global CO2 emissions. Today, only a small quantity of the refractory materials used can be recycled because raw materials (regenerates) obtained from end-of-life materials are of insufficient quality. In this study, regenerates from different refractory waste products could be obtained using the innovative processing method of electrodynamic fragmentation. It was shown that these regenerates have a high chemical purity and are therefore of high quality. It could be confirmed that the use of these regenerates in refractory materials does not affect the characteristic properties, such as refractoriness and mechanical strength. Thus, electrodynamic fragmentation is a process, which is able to provide high-quality raw materials for the refractory industry from used materials.