Dephosphorization of hot metal using rare earth oxide-containing slags

Abstract

An innovative rare earth oxide-containing slag for hot metal dephosphorization was proposed, and the factors influencing the efficiency during the dephosphorization of hot metal using rare earth oxide-containing slags were also studied. An increase in the temperature up to 1,550°C is beneficial to the dephosphorization process, and the maximum degree of dephosphorization for slags containing 6 wt% rare earth oxides is 44.49%; further temperature increases would deteriorate the efficiency, and the degree of dephosphorization decreases to 37.38% at 1,600°C. An increase in the basicity of slags up to 3.0, and the rare earth oxide content up to 6 wt%, improves the dephosphorization efficiency; further increase in the basicity and rare earth oxide content, the efficiency has almost no change. It was also found that an increase in the quantity of slags is beneficial to the dephosphorization reaction.