Development of a Semi-Wet Process for Ceramic Floor Tile Granule Production

Abstract

In ceramic tile manufacturing industry, the wet process including wet grinding and spray drying, is widely used for preparing granule. However, due to the high energy consumption for the water evaporation in spray dryer, it has become a major problem in wet process. In recent years, there have been vast amount of researches for developing of dry granulation processes in that granule size distributions cause quality problems in the final products.In this research, it is aimed to develop a new production system, called as Semi-Wet Process. The new system consists of a horizontal dryer, dry ball mill, separator and an additional high speed mixture. The raw-materials having low humidity are ground to the required fineness in dry size reduction process. The other components of recipe, that are prepared in conventional wet process, are mixed with the dry prepared powder in the mixing slurry tank. The addition of dry powder reduces the water ratio of final suspension. Hence, the natural gas consumption of the water evaporation in spray dryer is reduced substantially.The industrial application of the developed Semi Wet System was carried out in Kaleseramik Factory in Turkey, where 28% reduction on gas consumption has been achieved.