Today I wanna talk about something I messed around with recently – fireclay brick thermal conductivity. Sounds boring, right? But it was kinda interesting.
So, I got my hands on a couple of these fireclay bricks. I had no idea about their thermal conductivity, I just wanted to figure out how well they transfer heat. I mean, that’s what thermal conductivity is all about, isn’t it?
First off, I noticed these bricks are way denser than those insulating bricks. You know, the ones that are all porous and lightweight? Yeah, these fireclay ones are heavy. And I learned that because of this density, they’re gonna conduct heat better. It’s pretty straightforward.
Then, I started to measure the thermal conductivity. I used this heat flow meter, looked easy, but took me a lot of time to use it properly. I also learned about something called the laser flash method, which sounded cool, but I didn’t have the gear for that. Anyway, I got some numbers for the thermal conductivity and the porosity of the bricks. Turns out, the denser the brick, the higher the thermal conductivity. Who would’ve thought?
- Checked out the bricks’ chemical makeup.
- Looked at stuff like bulk density and porosity.
- Figured out how much they expand when heated.
I also dug into some data about the bricks’ chemical composition – you know, the usual alumina, silica content. And other properties like bulk density, apparent porosity. Oh, and I did a simple test on their thermal expansion. Just heated them up and saw how much bigger they got.
Later, I found an article about the thermal properties by using TGA which is a kind of method to measure thermal properties, and that gave me a better understanding of what I was dealing with. It was more like a confirmation of what I had already figured out on my own.
Conclusion
So, that’s my little adventure with fireclay bricks. It wasn’t exactly thrilling, but I learned a thing or two. These bricks are pretty good at conducting heat, especially compared to those fluffy insulating ones. And it all comes down to how dense they are. The denser, the better they conduct. Simple as that.
Hope you found this little experiment of mine interesting. I know it’s not exactly edge-of-your-seat stuff, but hey, it’s something! And maybe, just maybe, it made you think a bit more about bricks and heat. Who knows?
Alright, that’s all for now. I will be back with more of my daily messes. See ya!
