The main refractory lining of blast furnace hearth is composed by carbon blocks that operates in continuous contact with hot gases, liquid slag and hot metal, in temperatures above 1550 ºC for 24 hours a day. To fully understand the wear mechanism that acts in this refractory layer system it was performed a Post Mortem study during the last partial repair of this furnace. The samples were collected from different parts of the hearth lining and characterized using the following techniques: Bulk Density and Apparent Porosity, X-Ray Fluorescence, X-ray Diffraction, Scanning Electron Microscopy with Energy-dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy. The results showed that the carbon blocks located at the opposite side of the blast furnace tap hole kept its main physicochemical characteristics preserved even after the production of 20x10 6 ton of hot metal. However, the carbon blocks around the Tap Hole showed infiltration by hot metal and slag and it presents a severe deposition of zinc and sulfur over its carbon flakes. The presence of these elements is undesired because it reduces the physic-chemical stability of this refractory system. This deposition found in the carbon refractory is associated with impurities present in the both coke and the sinter feed used in this blast furnace in the last few years.

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In the last decade to get the demand of steel required for the global economy warming, coupled with the increasing blast furnaces productivity, steel mills have had problems of equipment availability, mainly to transfer hot metal productionl from blast furnaces to Steelmaking by Torpedo Cars. Studies of corrosion mechanisms in refractory materials used in torpedo cars showed that the presence of spinel, MgAl 2 O 4 , improves the erosion resistance and slag penetration in high-alumina based refractories. Considering that the refractories corrosion is controlled by the interface with the hot metal or slag, the decrease of refractories porosity contributes to the reduction in this surface area. Therefore, the refractory lining corrosion resistance improved when the pathways lead to penetration of the bath (hot metal/slag) are filled up to the maximum, without jeopardizing the microstructure, avoiding volumetric changes by differential thermal expansion. The goal of this study is to evaluate the corrosion wear behavior by hot metal/slag of Al 2 O 3 /C/SiC/MgAl 2 O 4 based materials incorporated with aluminum magnesium spinel into open porosity of this refractory materials. Thermal analysis (TG/DTA) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) were simultaneously study used the formation and chemical stability of spinel obtained from mixed solutions of b using magnesium and aluminum nitrates. After impregnation and corrosion tests Tammann furnace materials samples were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), mercury porosimetry, X-ray diffraction (XRD) to evaluate the wear mechanisms of refractory.

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