Glass-Lined Steel

Basics

• Also reffered to as "Industrial Porcelain Enamel" or "Glass-fused-to-steel" (Technology)
• It is essentially a Glass/Porcelain Lining Inside of a Standard Mild Steel Pipe/Tank etc
• Thus you have the inexpensive nature of steel, and the high thermal and chemical stability of ceramics/glasses (Re: Borosilicate Glass etc)
• Common Examples in a non-technical use would be Cookware and Traditional "Cast Iron Bathtubs"

To Be Researched

• Joinery Process:
  • Can Welding be Used?
  • Or can only Fittings and Cut-to-Length (then Coated + Fired ) Pieces be Used
• To What Degree Thermal Shock and thus Thermal Fractures of Glass are an issue
  • Although this isn't too difficult to solve then, just need slow Heat Up / Cool Down Periods
• Resistance to Etchants / Intensive Cleaning Agents such as Piranha Solution
  • Although they may not be used in many cases, in removal of Tars etc solutions like this may be needed
• Can Aluminum be coated in a similar way (If so make Glass-Lined Aluminum )
• Thermal Conductivity
  • Does the Glass Coating Complicate the usage of something along the lines of a Heating Mantle / Hotplate-Stirrer ? In which case an Immersion Heater would be required as well

Goals

• Hopefully this, along with things such as basic controls like use another process etc, engineering controls like this, and Sacrificial Anodes etc could allow basic metals (Like Mild Steel and Aluminum ) to be used in the same manner as Inconel
  • So one could have things like SCWG and various Bio-Petrochemical Reactors be made of appropriate materials (At least somewhat; No Chromium needed etc)

Industry Standards

GLS Tanks

• (Just to be clear, not certain of their standing, just stumbled upon this company before others)
• A Company Selling Glass-Lined Steel Tanks/Equipment
• Their Website's Main Page
  • A Page on Their Website Giving an Overview of their Production Process
  • This Goes As Follows:
    • Laser Cutting
    • Deburring
    • Surface Prep (Essentially using a Wire Wheel or something similar to "rough up" the surface)
    • Powder Coating
    • Ceramic Firing (At 800*C )
    • Quality Control
    • Shipping

Internal Links

• DLC / CVD Formed Diamond Coatings being used in a similar manner
  • I can't remember if This was the paper, but they essentially coated a pipe via CVD but (if i remember correctly) it was Plasma Assisted (PA-CVD) and the plasma was generated around an electrode/antennae/magnetron (whatever the correct term would be) inside the pipe
  • Either way DLC/CVD Coatings, other than requiring complex/(conventionally) expensive hardware, just utilize Methane , Electricity , and some thinks like surface prep materials (washing before the final Plasma Cleaning etc)
• Open Source Non-Stick Cookware / Open Source Non-Stick Frying Pan (/Saucepan etc)
  • A Bit goofy, but practical, and given the simplicity of Metal Casting followed by loading the finished castings into a PA-CVD machine for a bit, to make a product that sells like crazy (RE: All the "As Seen on TV" pans doing this with goofy names) is honestly a neat capability

External Links

• The Wikipedia Page on Industrial porcelain enamel