In recent years, the European ceramic industry has made several efforts to increase its efficiency and reduce its environmental impacts. Nevertheless, to date it is still behind in achieving Kyoto protocol objectives. At the same time the sector, traditionally a European fortress is heavily affected by international competition, which is hard to contrast with increasing energy prices and higher salary costs.

The project will face these environmental and economic problems by developing an innovative shuttle kiln for ceramic production, which consumes about 45% less energy than actually existing ones and, consequently, allows the industry to reduce costs, CO2, NOx, HF, SOx and dust emissions, and raw materials.

Intermittent (or shuttle) kilns are used in about 50% of the ceramic sectors, excluding only tiles industry. Producers of sanitary and table ware, refractory or artistic ceramics use a shuttle kiln for refining ceramic artefacts with some defects, while smaller factories use such a kiln also for first firing, alternatively to a tunnel kiln that requires high production levels.

Thanks to a computerized management of air and gas flow, the almost complete reuse of warm air from cooling and advanced materials for thermal insulation, the ECONOMICK kiln will ensure a specific consumption of 1300-1400 kcal/kg of firing product, comparable to the performance of a good tunnel kiln.

By substituting their tunnel kilns with ECONOMICK kiln, European industries - in particular SMEs – will drastically reduce their costs. This will strongly boost their capacity to maintain or improve their market share, especially in the high-end market.

 
 

OBJECTIVES

ECONOMICK kiln will help the ceramic sector achieving a twofold objective:

REDUCING  THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

  • contributing to mitigate climate change by significantly reduce CO2 emissions;
  • reducing pollutant emissions of NOx, HF, SOx and particle matter;
  • reducing consumption of energy and raw materials.

INCREASING EFFICIENCY AND COMPETITIVENESS

  • reducing operating costs (of which 30% is energy-related)
  • reducing costs for under-production by substituting tunnel kilns with ECONOMICK kilns
  • optimizing the logistic thanks to a more flexible production

KILN PHOTOGALLERY