This weekly roundup highlights the ceramic, glass, refractories, brick and related news stories that garnered the most attention during the previous week.

Refractory materials and lining reliability are key to increasing the performance of kilns, furnaces, fired heaters, incinerators, and reactors across a range of industries. Not only can the right refractory lining optimize production yield and minimize energy costs, but it can also enable consistent high performance of a furnace over the lifecycle of the refractory lining, in some cases for as long as 20 years.