Refractory conference examined materials matters

The 45th Symposium on Refractories, sponsored by the St. Louis Section and the Refractory Ceramics Division of The American Ceramic Society, was held between March 25-26, 2009 in St. Louis. The technical portion of the meeting, co-chaired by Bill Headrick of Missouri Refractories Co. and Dave Tucker of CE Minerals, carried the theme of 'Raw Materials'. The technical sessions were started by ACerS President John Kaniuk, who spoke about zirconia and it uses, followed by a presentation by Maurice Cook on in-house and customer quality-assurance usage standards. The second day of technical sessions featured presentations by Dale Zacherl on using coarse tabular alumina aggregate to improve castable performance, Chuck Alt on a new calcium aluminate binder for low-cement castables and Erin Eusner on bauxite and brown fused alumina supplies. The symposium concluded with a short presentation by Charles Semler on general raw-materials concerns followed by a discussion by a panel composed of raw-material supplier representatives.