Interactions between liquid slag and graphite during the reduction of metallic oxides

Abstract

High global demand for metallic elements such as Fe, Cr, Ti, Mn leads to an intensive technological development of metal recovery. One of the ways is to recover metals from metallurgical slag. The sessile drop method was adopted in order to study the interactions between liquid slag and graphite. Steelmaking slag was used during this research. The slag used included converter slag and slag from chrome steel melting as well as their mixtures with other modifiers. The analysis covered six types of slag in the temperature ranging from 1100°C to 1600°C in the argon atmosphere. In the course of research mass spectrometry and scanning microscope were used. The following were set for the examined samples during the reduction process: Iiquidus temperature and the nature of interactions (wettability or its lack). It was observed that the volume of slag samples dynamically changed in the course of the reduction of metallic oxides.