This article chronicles some of the USA's Department of Energy's long history of support for refractories research and looks to the future. For many years, the US Department of Energy supported refractory-related research to enable greater efficiency in energy-intensive industries, such as iron and steel, glass, aluminium and other nonferrous metal production, petrochemical, and pulp and paper. Much of this support came through research projects funded by the former DOE Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office of Industrial Technologies under programs such as Advanced Industrial Materials, Industrial Materials of the Future, and the Industrial Technologies Program. Under such initiatives, work took place at national laboratories, at universities and at private companies engages in manufacturing areas once labelled "industries of the future" by DOE because of their strategic and economic importance to American industry. This article summarises examples of such projects.
