Investigation of bubbles escape behavior from low basicity mold flux for high-Mn high-Al steels using 3D X-ray microscope

During the continuous casting process of high-Mn high-Al steels,various types of gases such as Ar need to escape through the top of the mold.In which,the behavior of bubbles traversing the liquid slag serves as a restrictive link,closely associated with viscosity and the thickness of liquid slag.In contrast to two-dimensional surface observation,three-dimensional(3D)analysis method can offer a more intuitive,accurate,and comprehensive information.Therefore,this study employs a 3D X-ray microscope(3D-XRM)to obtained spatial distribution and 3D morphological characteristics of residual bubbles in mold flux under different basicity of liquid slag,different temperatures,and different holding times.The results indicate that as basicity of slag increases from 0.52 to 1.03,temperature increases from 1423 to 1573 K,the viscosity of slag decreases,the floating rate of bubbles increases.In addition,when holding time increases from 10 to 30 s,the bubbles floating distance increases,and the volume fraction and average equivalent sphere diameter of the bubbles solidified in the mold flux gradually decreases.In one word,increasing the basicity,temperature,and holding time leading to an increase in the removal rate of bubbles especially for the large.These findings of bubbles escape behavior provide valuable insights into optimizing low basicity mold flux for high-Mn high-Al steels.

Industrial Application of Desulfurization Using Low Basicity Refining Slag in Tire Cord Steel

Desulfurization performance with low binary basicity refining slag in 72 grade tire cord steel was calculated using FactSage and it is found that sulfur content in steel decreases with the increase of basicity of slag, MgO content in slag and slag/steel ratio while sulfur partition ratio between slag and steel increases gradually with the increase of basicity of slag as well as MgO content. Experiments were carried out and the results are of great agreements with theoretical calculation. Then industrial application tests were performed in a domestic plant and good results were achieved. Sulfur content in steel decreases gradually during refining process, as a result, sulfur content in the billets is controlled in the range of 0.007 1%-0.008 1%. Sulfur content in steel refined with slag basicity of 1.21 is lower than that of 1.02, while the plasticity of oxide compound inclusions is a little better controlled in low basicity heats. Using refining slag with basicity of 1.0-1.2 and MgO content of 5%-10% and reducing the slag takeover of LD are favorable for improving the desulfurization performance and the plasticity of inclusions during the industrial production.

Measuring and Modeling of Density for Selected CaO-MgO-Al_2O_3-SiO_2 Slag With Low Silica

The densities of the selected quaternary CaO-MgO-Al2O3-SiO2 slag with low silica were measured by the Archimedean method in a wide temperature range from 1773 to 1 873 K. Nine different slag compositions were chosen based on three diffel：ent levels of CaO content and three different levels of SiO2 content. WM,O was equal to 7. 0%. Wcao were varied from 40.04% to 50.64%, for wsO2 =10.25%-20. 70%. The effects of temperature, SiOz content and optical basicity were studied. It is shown that density decreases approximately linearly with an increase in temperature. Under the same CaO content, the density decreases with increasing of SiOz content, and increases with optical basicity increasing. Based on the experimental data as the boundary of the homogenous phase region predicated by FACTSAGE software, the mass triangle model is used to calculate the density of selected limited homogenous phase region. The results showed that the mass triangle model works well.