TCNA Honors Ryan Marino with Award of Appreciation

Anderson, S.C. -- ASTM International Committee C21 on Ceramic Whitewares and Related Products recognized TCNA standards development and research manager Ryan Marino with an Award of Appreciation for his outstanding contributions to the revision of ASTM standard C373, a transformative contribution to water absorption testing and ceramic tile classification.

The committee expressed its appreciation for Marino's research and technical vision at the recent TCNA board meeting in June. A previous method that had stood for decades as the standard for testing water absorption took approximately 30 hours for results. Marino has been working for the past five years to develop a vacuum method that produced results in one hour. This research involved Marino taking the method to labs across the country and applying the test to determine the precision of the method. Marino facilitated a consensus of the testing facilities, industry discussion, and the review of data with the ASTM committee to build consensus for the balloting process to consider adopting the new process.