Julio Aníbal Morales Pereira

Evaluation of Secondary Steelmaking Slags and Their Relation with Steel Cleanliness

Based on data provided from an industrial plant and FactSage commercial software use, a study of secondary refining slags and inclusion cleanliness was performed. Six heats of two slag series, namely, A and B, with average chemical composition (wt pct) of 43.00CaO-25.90SiO2-12.96Al2O3-18.13MgO for series A and 49.98CaO-23.88SiO2-10.11Al2O3-11.99MgO-4.03CaF2 for series B, were used for the study. Both series used DIN 38MnS6 modified steel. The effective viscosity, solid fraction, composition of the liquid fraction, and slag saturation degree in MgO (calculated through thermodynamic software) were related to the experimental results obtained for the inclusion cleanliness. The B slags showed lower effective viscosity than the A slags, due to their high liquid fraction. Regarding the capacity of slags in the inclusion removal, slag B5 resulted in the lowest inclusion density and was considered as the best choice among the slags studied. The inclusion species formed using B slags are constituted especially of CaO-Al2O3-SiO2 and MgO-Al2O3 and are Al2O3 rich. The presence of sulfide-type inclusions (AlMnS and CaS) were more pronounced among A slags.