Specialty Industries: Unique and Beneficial

Alumina is an integral part of many industries outside of ceramics, though often it is difficult to see.  Alumina is a specialty product for these industries, providing unique properties and characteristics to benefit their process and product.  Glass applications utilize alumina to add strength and purity.  Various filler industries utilize its hardness, wear resistance or thermal properties.  The aerospace industry uses it for molds that are inert, strong and creep resistant.  Metal foundries use it as both an pure and inert filter to remove unwanted slag and contaminants from molten metal, and to recuperate heat for energy savings.  The construction market uses high alumina cements for their whiteness and early strength development.  Regardless of the application, alumina continues to provide strong advantages over other raw materials prove its versatility across many industries.

Almatis offers the broadest portfolio of specialty calcined and tabular aluminas in the industry.  Our premium aluminas are regarded for their highly consistent properties, ensuring efficient, defect-free manufacturing.

Calcined aluminas

Almatis offers a variety of unground calcined aluminas with primary crystal sizes ranging from 0.3 – 25μm. Our calcined alumina purity levels range from 99.5 - 99.8%, including normal soda (≤0.35%), intermediate soda (≤0.20%), low soda (≤0.10%) and ultra-low soda (≤0.05%) products.

Ultra-low soda calcines

The soda content of an alumina often dictates its ability to be used in a specific application. Since residual Na₂O at the particle surface can become soluble and change pH and rheology characteristics, some wet processes respond better to aluminas with ultra-low soda levels. Almatis offers a number of calcined aluminas with a guaranteed Na₂O content ≤0.05%, such as A 14, A 14 -325 and CT 3000 LS SG. CT 3000 LS SG is our highly reactive batch ground product that also features a low SiO₂ content, which is especially critical for products that are subjected to harsh chemical or wear environments.

Continuous ground calcines

Continuous ground calcined aluminas feature broad particle size distributions, which are a blend of individual crystals and partial agglomerates. Almatis produces its continuous ground products in highly efficient ball mill-air classifier systems with a focus on controlling median particle size and +45μm residual
agglomerate content.

Batch ground reactives

Batch ground aluminas are fully ground products often used for the manufacture of technical and advanced ceramic parts. Almatis produces batch grounds with mono-modal (CT 3000 SG) and bi-modal (A 15 SG) distributions, which are suitable for use in a variety of processes. While many applications require the narrow particle size distribution of a mono-modal product, bi-modal products are used where higher green densities are needed.

Specialty tabular products

Almatis produces specialized tabular alumina fractions targeted for the investment casting, functional filler, ceramic roller, metal filtration and regeneration burner markets. Some of our tabular products are available in low iron (LI), intermediate soda (SP) and ultra-low soda (XLS) versions, or as washed products (Tabalox). We also offer a variety of spherical alumina balls in smooth (T162) and round (T160, FBA) versions for applications such as filter beds and regeneration burners.