The Chinese Get Their Name For Tabular Corundum

Tabular corundum was sintered in the shaft kiln invented by ThomasS.Curis in 1934 and was commercially produced in 1935 after an intermediate test as a lining material for furnaces in the refractory and ceramic industries. In the 1950s, as a bulk refractory aggregate, it was applied in the refractory industry. After that, a series of tabular corundum products with low NaO industrial alumina as raw materials were developed successively.

Tabularcorundum is now widely known by domestic refractory industry, but in the late 1980s, this high-end refractory material was only known as Tabularcorundum. So when did the Chinese name tabular corundum come into being and why was it named.

Until the late 1990s, the Chinese Tabular corundum market had been monopolized by foreign companies for a long time and they could not produce this high-end refractory material themselves. Therefore, it was natural for domestic companies to use the English name "Tabularcorundum" when importing the material from abroad. This situation continued until 1997, when the technicians led by Zhang Huiyou made unremitting efforts and after thousands of explorations, they finally succeeded in mastering the firing technology of tab-like corundum.

Tabularcorundum is one of the most difficult materials to use in China. However, it is not convenient to use the name Tabularcorundum among Chinese companies. We need an appropriate Chinese name for the product. The technical team came up with names like "sintered corundum," "High temperature corundum," "crystalline corundum," and even "flake alumina," but none of these names most accurately captured the manufacturing process and characteristics of the new material.

"Sintered tabular corundum" proposed by Mr. Zhang Huiyou, referred to as "tabular corundum", is very interesting. The word "sintered" in the name refers to the firing process of tabular corundum, which requires alumina balls to be fired and crystallized at the high temperature of 1700-1900 degrees Celsius. The word "tabular" means that the physical and chemical structure of the finished product after firing presents a state of crystal connection under the microscope. The word "corundum" indicates the identity of its alumina products.