What are the differences between insulating fire bricks and refractory bricks?

Refractory brick is a kind of material used under high temperature conditions. So is insulating fire brick. Refractory fire bricks seem to have a kind of relationship with insulating fire bricks, but they are actually not the same thing. You may wonder how to distinguish these two materials and what are the differences between them. Some ways to identify insulating fire bricks and refractory fire bricks will be introduced in the following sections.

-        What is refractory fire brick?

-        What is insulating fire brick?

-        Differences between insulating fire bricks and refractory bricks

          o   Function

          o   Fire resistance

          o   Bulk density

What is refractory fire brick?

Refractory fire bricks have good refractoriness and they are generally used in situations where extremely high temperatures exist. Refractory fire bricks mainly consist of alumina and silica. Dense refractory bricks are utilized in a wide range of industrial fields, including metallurgical industry, chemical industry, mechanical industry and so on.

What is insulating fire brick?

Insulating fire brick is a kind of popular material that plays the role of insulation, heat preservation and coldness preservation during manufacturing operations and processes. It is a generic name for the materials and material composites which are bad at transferring heat (an ability also called as thermal shock resistance). Insulating fire bricks are usually used as the inside linings of furnaces or other high temperature facilities.

Differences between insulating fire bricks and refractory bricks

Refractory fire bricks and insulating fire bricks are in fact two different materials, though they share similar names. Customers often feel confused when making choices between the two. Dense refractory bricks and insulating fire bricks differ mainly in three aspects, including their functions, fire resistance and bulk density.

Function:

An important function of insulating fire bricks is to, just as the name indicates, insulate heat and decrease the loss of heat. Thus, the insulating fire bricks (such as mullite insulating fire brick, refractory clay insulating brick, high aluminum insulating brick) do not directly contact with fire. However, the refractory fire bricks, including zircon brick and fused cast AZS block, are famous for their property of being able to withstand the temperature of fire. Therefore, dense refractory bricks can directly contact with fire and they are often used for fire resistant firing.

Fire resistance:

The temperatures that insulating fire bricks and refractory fire bricks can withstand are not the same. The fire resistance of insulating refractory brick is no more than 1400 Celsius degrees, while the fire resistance of dense refractory brick is usually more than 1400 Celsius degrees.

Bulk density:

Insulating fire brick is a kind of light insulating material whose density is ranging from 0.8 to 1.0g/cm3, but the density of refractory fire brick is often more than 2.0g/m3.

In general, the differences between insulating fire bricks and refractory bricks are large. Due to these big differences, the environment and scope that they are suitable to apply are often different. When buying bricks, we need to consider the situation and choose the more appropriate material of the two for the certain condition.