• Porcelain Enamel Synonyms:

porcelain enamel frit, vitreous enamel, porcelain enamel, blue porcelain, white porcelain, paste porcelain, meissen porcelain, glaze, clay, glass, soapstone, lime,  

• Porcelain Enamel Description:

Enamel (or vitreous enamel or porcelain enamel in U.S.) is the colorful result of fusing powdered glass to a substrate by firing, usually between 750 and 850 degrees Celsius. The powder melts and flows and hardens to a smooth, durable vitreous coating on metal, glass or ceramic.

• Porcelain Enamel Properties:

1) Enamel powder often is applied as a paste, and may be transparent or opaque when fired; vitreous enamel can be applied to most metals. It has many excellent properties: it is smooth, hard, chemically resistant, durable, can assume brilliant, long-lasting colors, and cannot burn. Its disadvantages are its tendency to crack or shatter when the substrate is stressed or bent. Its durability has found it many functional applications: early 20th century advertising signs, interior oven walls, cooking pots, exterior walls of kitchen appliances, cast iron bathtubs, farm storage silos, and processing equipment such as chemical reactors and pharmaceutical chemical process tanks. Commercial structures such as gas stations, bus stations and even Lustron Houses had walls, ceilings and structural elements made of porcelain-enamel steel.

2) Color in enamel is obtained by the addition of various minerals, often metal oxides cobalt, praseodymium, iron, or neodymium. The last creates delicate shades ranging from pure violet through wine-red and warm gray. Enamel can be either transparent, opaque or opalescent (translucent), which is a variety that gains a milky opacity the longer it is fired. Different enamel colors cannot be mixed to make a new color, in the manner of paint. This produces tiny specks of both colors; although the eye can be tricked by grinding colors together to an extremely fine, flour-like, powder.

• Porcelain Enamel Chemical Properties Available:

Usually to customer specification

• Porcelain Enamel Physical Properties Available:

Usually to customer specification 

• Porcelain Enamel Typical Applications:

1) Architectural panels
 
2) Barbeques
 
3) Bath-tubs & shower trays
 
4) Hot water boilers
 
5) Cooker panels and ovens
 
6) Grills & pan supports
 
7) Microwave ovens
 
8) Washing machine drums and housings  

• Porcelain Enamel Packaging:

Jars, drums, multiply bags

• Porcelain Enamel TSCA (SARA Title III) Status:

Varies. For further information please call the E.P.A. at +1.202-554-1404

• Porcelain Enamel CAS Numbers:

Varies

• Porcelain Enamelist Society (USA):

Direct Courtesy Link