Abstract

The Federation for International Refractory Research and Education (FIRE) is a non-profit organisation established to promote refractory related research and education on a global basis. FIRE aims to stimulate and reinforce international education and research programmes for the refractory industry. Its strength is a unique grouping of expertise drawn from all sectors of the refractory producing, supplying and consuming industries coupled with the world’s leading academic institutions involved in refractory research. FIRE is committed to a series of research programmes which are by definition pre-competitive and are aimed at leveraging the research network capability of FIRE with contributions from both industrial and academic partners. They are designed to further refractory science and provide a basis for education through academic research.

As an illustration of how cooperative research programmes can benefit the development of monolithic refractories, a data mining analysis of published papers spanning a 35 year history has been used to identify different active communities and the fields of research around Monolithic refractories on a global basis. The importance of the FIRE network and the establishment of different research communities can be seen emerging in recent years

More specifically, the analysis provides a linkage between the different global research communities and research themes relevant to Monolithic refractories such as Raw Materials, Binders, Simulation, Carbon, mechanical tests. The paper will illustrate some of the ongoing cooperative programmes in the field of refractories research and how different disciplines can be harnessed to yield new and novel insights into the underpinning mechanisms of refractories technology.

Conclusions will be drawn from the key learnings of these multi-partner research programmes and how this can be applied to create further value through the usage chain of monolithic refractories.  Future perspectives will explore the areas where further basic cooperative research on monolithic refractories could bring benefits