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Re: Vermiculite prices
KC and all,
I had a very interesting meeting with a refractory supplier yesterday. He deals mainly with companies building furnaces and boilers, but he has also sold into the Italian community to people building their own pizza ovens. The good thing is that it looks like I've finally solved the refractory supply dilemma here in the Toronto/southern Ontario area, because he stocks cal sil board, refractory batt in thicknesses up to four inches, refractory tile, tapered and arch bricks, castable high heat mortar, refractory mortar (dry and premixed). All very cool. We're still working on a pricing structure for the small amounts I would need.
The most interesting part of the meeting came when he introduced me to Matrilite 18, a product I'd never heard about. It's "a lighweight insulating castable designed for general purpose duty at moderate operating temperatures. Common applications include air heaters, combustion chambers of indirectly fired dryers and door linings. Matrilite 18 can also be used as backup for dense refractory furnace roofs, marine and stationary boilers." Well, moderate, for those guys; see below.
The maximum exposed use temperature is 815 C, while the maximum backup use temperature is 982 C (note this is in centigrade). According to him, this product would be a far more efficient insulator than the perlite/vermiculite Portland mix we've all used because Portland reduces the insulating properties of the dry material, and the dry material itself is not that good an insulator by comparison. After heating to 815 C, Matrilite has a thermal conductivity of 1.53 Btu-in/hr-ft 2-F. The cold crush strength after after the same heating is 1080 psi.
The major components are 39 percent CaO and 35 percent Si02. There are much smaller percentages of other materials, none of which means anything to me.
Right now, it looks like a 25 lb bag will cost about $25 CDN, but I'm not sure just yet. This stuff is light, so the bag is large. Seems to me that this would be the perfect material for coating Insulfrax batts or directly on brick. The rep told me that 2 inches of Matrilite would be far better than 4 inches of vermic/Portland.
The US distributor is Allied Mineral Products, 3025 Mineral Loop, Brownsville, Texas, 1-614-878-0244. No doubt there's a website; this is a multinational company.
In Ontario, the dealer is Alphatherm Inc., 8201 Keele Street, Unit 4, Concord, Ontario L4K 1Z4, 1-905-738-0126, Welcome to Alphatherm Inc. - About Us.
I was given a complimentary bag of Matrilite, and I'll be mixing up a small batch in the next few days and report on performance. Of course, I'm in no way connected to any of these companies, and I can only speculate on performance until I've tried it. If it works, it's just in time because I have three and possibly four FB oven installations to do in the coming weeks. I was told that with two inches of batt insulation and two inches of Matrilite, the need for loose material to fill the enclosure would be eliminated. We'll see.
Jim
KC and all,
I had a very interesting meeting with a refractory supplier yesterday. He deals mainly with companies building furnaces and boilers, but he has also sold into the Italian community to people building their own pizza ovens. The good thing is that it looks like I've finally solved the refractory supply dilemma here in the Toronto/southern Ontario area, because he stocks cal sil board, refractory batt in thicknesses up to four inches, refractory tile, tapered and arch bricks, castable high heat mortar, refractory mortar (dry and premixed). All very cool. We're still working on a pricing structure for the small amounts I would need.
The most interesting part of the meeting came when he introduced me to Matrilite 18, a product I'd never heard about. It's "a lighweight insulating castable designed for general purpose duty at moderate operating temperatures. Common applications include air heaters, combustion chambers of indirectly fired dryers and door linings. Matrilite 18 can also be used as backup for dense refractory furnace roofs, marine and stationary boilers." Well, moderate, for those guys; see below.
The maximum exposed use temperature is 815 C, while the maximum backup use temperature is 982 C (note this is in centigrade). According to him, this product would be a far more efficient insulator than the perlite/vermiculite Portland mix we've all used because Portland reduces the insulating properties of the dry material, and the dry material itself is not that good an insulator by comparison. After heating to 815 C, Matrilite has a thermal conductivity of 1.53 Btu-in/hr-ft 2-F. The cold crush strength after after the same heating is 1080 psi.
The major components are 39 percent CaO and 35 percent Si02. There are much smaller percentages of other materials, none of which means anything to me.
Right now, it looks like a 25 lb bag will cost about $25 CDN, but I'm not sure just yet. This stuff is light, so the bag is large. Seems to me that this would be the perfect material for coating Insulfrax batts or directly on brick. The rep told me that 2 inches of Matrilite would be far better than 4 inches of vermic/Portland.
The US distributor is Allied Mineral Products, 3025 Mineral Loop, Brownsville, Texas, 1-614-878-0244. No doubt there's a website; this is a multinational company.
In Ontario, the dealer is Alphatherm Inc., 8201 Keele Street, Unit 4, Concord, Ontario L4K 1Z4, 1-905-738-0126, Welcome to Alphatherm Inc. - About Us.
I was given a complimentary bag of Matrilite, and I'll be mixing up a small batch in the next few days and report on performance. Of course, I'm in no way connected to any of these companies, and I can only speculate on performance until I've tried it. If it works, it's just in time because I have three and possibly four FB oven installations to do in the coming weeks. I was told that with two inches of batt insulation and two inches of Matrilite, the need for loose material to fill the enclosure would be eliminated. We'll see.
Jim
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