| Summary: | To efficiently reduce heat loss in high-temperature furnaces, the use of a working lining with low thermal conductivity, in lightweight refractories is a significant development. Conventional lightweight refractories focus on the fabrication of Al2O3-based, spinel-based, or Al2O3-spinel based refractories with micro-sized closed pores. In this study, lightweight magnesia-based aggregates with smaller nano-sized pores were fabricated by the decomposition of magnesite by using nano-sized Al2O3 and ZrO2 as additives. The lightweight magnesia containing nano-sized intracrystalline pores (100–300 nm) had a relatively low thermal conductivity of 4.539 W⋅m−1K−1 at 500 °C with a bulk density of 3.37 g/cm3 and a closed porosity of 4.3%. Moreover, the formation mechanism of nano-sized intracrystalline pores was proposed, and the effect of nano-sized additives on the sintering properties was discussed. We concluded that nano-sized Al2O3 and ZrO2 raise the number of nano-sized intracrystalline pores by increasing their migration distance required to separate from the magnesia grains. With the joint addition of nano-sized Al2O3 and ZrO2, the lightweight magnesia possessed the lowest thermal conductivity, as well as excellent strength, owing to the generation of intergranular MgAl2O4 spinel. Furthermore, the nano-sized Al2O3 and ZrO2 also promoted the sintering of magnesia resulting in the formation of cation vacancies (VMg⁎⁎). Keywords: Lightweight refractories, Magnesia, Nano-sized intracrystalline pores, Sintering
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