Energy-saving upgrades to high-temperature industrial kilns are driving growth in demand for lightweight, insulating, and refractory materials.
Release time:
2025-12-23
【Summary】 Energy-saving upgrades to high-temperature industrial kilns are significantly boosting demand for lightweight, insulating, and refractory materials.
Energy-saving upgrades to high-temperature industrial kilns are significantly boosting demand for lightweight, insulating refractory materials. As energy-intensive industries such as steel, building materials, and petrochemicals urgently seek to improve energy efficiency, the lightweighting of kilns and optimization of thermal efficiency have emerged as key technological approaches. Thanks to their low thermal conductivity, low heat capacity, and high porosity, lightweight insulating refractory materials have become the core materials for energy-saving kiln renovations.
Take the iron and steel industry as an example: the trend toward larger blast furnaces and the widespread adoption of short-process smelting technologies have placed higher demands on the thermal insulation performance of furnace lining materials. Lightweight mullite bricks and hollow alumina sphere bricks, by reducing heat storage losses in furnace walls, can boost blast furnace thermal efficiency by more than 10%. In the construction materials sector, the upgrade of cement kiln external decomposition technology has seen the application of lightweight aluminosilicate fiber modules, which have lowered the kiln surface temperature by 50℃ and reduced heat dissipation losses by 30%. In the petrochemical industry, after adopting low-thermal-conductivity castables in tubular heating furnaces, fuel consumption has been reduced by 5% to 8%, while the service life of the furnace lining has also been extended.
In terms of technological iteration, lightweight materials with nano- and micro-pore structures combined with fiber-reinforced thermal insulation systems have become a research and development hotspot. These materials can maintain a thermal conductivity of less than 0.2 W/(m·K) even at high temperatures of 1,200℃, representing a 40% improvement in energy-saving performance compared to conventional materials. Industry data show that in 2023, China’s output of lightweight thermal insulation refractory materials increased by 8% year-on-year, with the steel industry accounting for over 60% of this growth. Demand in the petrochemical and nonferrous metals sectors grew at a rate of 15%. As the “dual-carbon” strategy continues to advance, the industrial sector’s demand for materials with characteristics such as lightweight design, long service life, and low energy consumption will keep rising, driving lightweight thermal insulation refractory materials toward higher performance and integrated functionality.
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