A short review is presented of prospects for using nanomaterials in various refractory technologies, and an estimate is given of existing and future directions of their use for improving the operating properties of refractories. The possibility of controlling material properties at the atomic level makes it possible to create new innovative refractory materials and technology.The main stimulus in the development of the contemporary refractory industry is improvement of existing and the development of new high-temperature technology with even more severe specifications for refractory operating conditions, i.e. temperature, chemical erosion, mechanism, etc.Here the task of improving the service properties of refractories is inseparably connected with the question of reducing the cost of production, observation of ecological standards, the possibility if utilizing waste products, and recycling refractories.The requirement for finding comprehensive solutions has led to use in the majority of heating units, in particular ferrous metallurgy, of complex multicomponent composite materials, including oxide ceramics, metals and carbon. During the last thirty years significant success has been achieved in optimizing the physicochemical properties and chemical composition of these refractories for specific operating conditions. Currently the main areas of development include a change-over to controlling the refractory properties for an evermore finer size level, since the microstructure of any material is mainly determined by occurrence within it of different physicochemical processes.In view of this use in refractories of highly-(0.1 -1 mm) and nanodispersed (10 -100 nm) systems with a controlled composition and morphology is very important. In fact, the refractory branch, for tens of years and thousand of tons of consumed technical grade carbon (soot) and silica (microsilica, aerosil) is already one of the largest world users of nanomaterials. Development of new refractory technology has a favorable effect on formation of the market for new industrial nanomaterials, stimulating an increase in the volume of their production and a reduction cost.Interest in this class of materials is due to the possibility of a marked change in properties of normal substances by converting them to a nanosize condition [1]. An increase in the relative proportion of atoms or molecules, that are at the surface of particles, leads to an increase in the contribution of surface energy in practically all physicochemical processes of nanodispersed system reaction with the surroundings. Such a change, important from the point of view of dispersed refractory systems, may be a reduction in the melting and sintering temperatures, an increase in chemical activity and the rate of occurrence of chemical reactions, the possibility of preparing alloys, compounds and composites, impossible in traditional materials from a thermodynamic point of view. In turn, an increase in the relative interphase surface of bulky compacted refractories leads to a marked impro...
