Abstract
Following the energy crisis in 1980, many saving technologies have been investigated with attempts to implement them into various industries, one of them is the field of ceramic production. In order to comply with energy saving trends and environmental issues, the European ceramic industry sector has developed energy efficient systems which reduced significantly production time and costs and reduced total energy consumption. The last achievement is of great importance as the energy consumption of the ceramic process accounts for a significant percentage of the total production costs. More precisely, the firing stage consumes the highest amount of energy during the whole ceramic production process. The use of roller kilns, fired by natural gas, involves a loss of 50% of the input energy via the flue gas and the cooling gas exhausts. This review paper briefly describes the production process of the different ceramic products, with a focus on the ceramic sector in Europe. Due to the limited on waste heat recovery in the ceramic industry, other high temperature waste heat recovery applications are considered in the paper, such as in concrete and steel production, which could have a potential use in the ceramic industry. The state of the art technologies used in the ceramics industry are reviewed with a special interest in waste heat recovery from the ceramic process exhaust stacks and energy saving technologies.
Highlights
Ceramic components are defined as non-organic, non-metallic materials that are consolidated using heat
The energy consumption is reflected in the associated cost contribution, and there is a clear indication that a significant percentage of the total production costs is for energy consumption [3]
Studies on energy saving and the quality of ceramic products have highlighted that the implementation of energy saving technologies is crucial in response of the worldwide energy crisis and environmental issues and for product quality and cost reduction [4,5,6]
Summary
Ceramic components are defined as non-organic, non-metallic materials that are consolidated using heat. The solidification of the ceramic based products takes place in a high temperature kiln, usually for a prolonged duration. The application of high temperature heat is by definition an energy intensive process [1, 2]. The energy consumption is reflected in the associated cost contribution, and there is a clear indication that a significant percentage of the total production costs is for energy consumption [3]. The European ceramics sector is divided in two different sectors: “traditional ceramics” (wall and floor tiles, tableware and sanitary ware) and “advanced ceramics” (electronical ceramics, technical ceramics, and bio ceramics) [7]. Tile manufacture represents 75% of the total energy consumption; sanitary ware 15% and the table ware 10% (Fig. 1)
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