The growing technology employed on steelmaking industry resulted an equivalent development of refractories, where reductions of maintenance time and increasing working life have been one of the major requirements. The increase of monolithics consumption, especially castables, can be explained by their easy application and repair features. However, as the castables are applied in fluid form, problems with drying stage are frequently verified during this processing step. Studies in this area report the utilization of drying admixtures, which can avoid explosive spalling and optimize the drying rates. However, information about intrinsic variables, like water content, and its influence on the drying behavior of refractories castables are scarce in the technical literature. Thus, the objective of this work was to analyze the impact of water content on drying and explosive spalling behavior of refractory castables. The increase of water content resulted in castables with superior permeability and lower explosion resistance.
refractory castables; water content; drying; explosion spalling
