Methods to Determine Characteristics of AOD-Converter Decarburization-Slags

Abstract

Argon Oxygen Decarburization (AOD) converter slags are known to consist of both liquid and solid phases, but limited information on the slag characteristics has been published in the open literature. Therefore, a new methodology to study the characteristics of slag samples taken from the AOD converter process during production was developed based on petrography. The results show that the preparations of the slag samples using the borax method are suitable to use when determining the chemical composition of AOD slag samples using the X-ray fluorescence (XRF) method. The results also showed that both the light optical microscopy (LOM) method and a method combining scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) can be used to characterize the slag samples and that the correlation between the methods was found to be good. This means that it is possible to use the faster LOM method instead of the more complicated SEM-EDS method to characterize AOD slag samples. Finally, the results show that the difference between calculated values based on stoichiometry and measured data for Ca and Cr in AOD slags are 11.7 mass% and 11.3 mass%, respectively. This is considered to be a good agreement for industrial samples.