Refractories education in Argentina

TOMBA MARTINEZ, ANALÍA G.

Orlando, Florida, USA

Congreso; 9th Biennial Worldwide Congress on Refractories (UNITECR'05); 2005

The American Ceramic Society

The current status of refractories education in Argentine is revised in an academic and industrial context. In this country, the ceramic industry, including the refractory one, collapsed in the biennium 2001-2003 because of the applied importation policies and the high taxes, among other factors. Before 2001, even though refractories were fabricated here, the steelmaking and cement industries, the main consumers of refractory materials, basically bought their products to Brazil and China. In the present, there is a reactivation in the commercialized volume of refractories (locally and imported) and in their internal consumption. Just since the creation of Materials Engineering careers fifteen years ago, the academic education in the specific field of refractory materials has began, inserted in that of ceramics in general, at graduate level. Before this, the formal training in this field was restricted just to both non-specific careers as Metallurgical Engineering and to industry or post-graduate courses. Even in this last case, the local specific courses were scarce, being more frequent the post-graduate specialization abroad. In addition, the refractories education at this level has a close relation to research activities in this field, which in turn has been and is strongly linked to industry demands, mainly from those that consume refractory materials. At present, specific courses in refractory materials at graduate level (in careers as Materials Engineering or other related as Chemical, Mechanic and Metallurgy Engineering) are still limited. Conversely, they are commonly part of the contents of more general subjects. At post-graduate level, the situation is not different. It is expected that from the industrial reactivation and the slightly growth of research in refractories field, the education of this matter could be more specific and gain more importance in the graduate and post-graduate programs, mainly in the more related careers as Material Engineering.