If you’re at all like me, you wonder which articles get the most attention on our website. Every year we publish over 40 feature articles, and at the end of the year we gather statistics to see which ones get the most page views. So, without further ado, here are the five most-viewed articles on www.industrialheating.com based on page views in 2021. This ranking applies only to articles published in 2021.

HarbisonWalker International (HWI) intends to invest $25 million to convert its closed Fairfield, Ala., plant into an advanced refractories manufacturing, service and distribution hub for southern U.S. steelmakers. Construction will begin during the first quarter of 2022, and the 200,000-square-foot facility is expected to open before the end of the year. The investment will increase refractory capacity and efficiency commensurate with steel customers’ production investments. HWI anticipates hiring 50 highly trained technicians and staff in a team-based environment at the plant.

Plicast Al-Rezist is a line of low-cement, aluminum-resistant refractories expressly engineered to mitigate damaging and costly corundum growth in furnaces. 

The Brokk Cart improves efficiency when moving remote-controlled demolition robots across hard, level surfaces, such as those in a maintenance shop.

Registration for IHEA’s Fundamentals of Industrial Process Heating Online Learning Course is now open. Scheduled to begin January 17, 2022, the six-week class will run through February 27. The flexible online format and interactive forums are just some of the benefits of this class. The curriculum includes the basics of heat transfer, fuels and combustion, energy use, furnace design, refractories, automatic control, and atmospheres as applied to industrial process heating. Weekly coursework, quizzes and a final-exam project are administered to guide students on their progress and evaluate their knowledge of the material.

It’s time to upgrade maintenance practices for vertical vessels. Like any routine maintenance, inspecting, removing and replacing refractory in vertical vessels places a costly burden on facilities in terms of downtime and lost productivity. One of the main reasons for this is the traditional solution for accessing vertical surfaces – scaffolding – severely limits efficiency.

In response to increased demand from the U.S. steel industry, HarbisonWalker International (HWI) – a supplier of refractory products – is making an investment to substantially increase production of its steelmaking products. HWI will build a manufacturing and service hub for steel customers in the United States. The Pittsburgh, Pa.-based company is assessing strategic site options, and construction is scheduled to begin immediately once the location is determined. The new facility is expected to open as early as the third quarter of 2022.
 

SGL Carbon is expanding and modernizing its soft-felt production. The company invested in an additional carbonization facility at its Meitingen site near Augsburg, Germany, that is now operational. Branded as Sigratherm materials, the carbon and graphite soft felts are used as high-quality insulation material in resistance-heated and induction-heated vacuum furnaces and in furnaces with an inert-gas atmosphere.

The Plibrico Company, a supplier of monolithic refractories and construction services, completed the acquisition of Redline Industries Inc. Chicago-based Redline Industries supplies low-cement refractory castables and gun mixes. Redline refractories are engineered to safeguard furnaces in the high-temperature processing of nonferrous metals, such as aluminum, as well as prevent furnace heat loss to promote greater energy efficiency. Plibrico will continue to manufacture Redline refractories to their current specifications and promote the Redline brand within Plibrico’s product portfolio.

ASM International and AGMA are committed to holding the 31^st Heat Treating Society Conference and Exposition (Heat Treat 2021) and the Motion + Power Technology Expo September 14-16 in St. Louis, Mo., and will not be canceling the events. Members want a platform to conduct business face‐to‐face, and it is our job to support that with our conferences and trade shows. The top priority remains the health and safety of all those who support the event on‐site. We have protocols in place and are working with America's Center Convention Complex, the city of St. Louis and our vendor partners to provide a safe environment for a successful in‐person event.