Reduction mechanism of stainless steelmaking dust and carbon pellets

1 INTRODUCTIONThe smelting temperature generally reaches1 600 ℃or higher in stainless steel making opera-tion. Under this condition,approxi mately 1 % 2 %(mass fraction) of the scrap charged into the fur-nace is converted to dust1]as by-product of steel-making process .It has been assigned as a hazard-ous waste and banned from landfills by variousgovernment regulatory agencies because it containsa lot of heavy metals such as zinc ,lead,cadmium,chromium and nickel , which will be leached …

Reduction mechanism of stainless steelmaking dust and carbon pellets

The reduction mechanism of stainless steelmaking dust and carbon pellets was investigated. The metal oxides present in the dust were reduced by carbon with a new direct reduction technology. The direct reduction parameters were determined by measuring the rates of dust melting and reduction. The results show that the rate of reduction is faster than that of the melting. Both melting and reduction processes are accelerated by the direct transfer of heat from the smelting slag. The recovery of metals is improved while the pellets were added to argon oxygen decarburization(AOD) or vacuum oxygen decarburization(VOD) vessels in the late period of the first smelting stage. More carbon travels to the slag instead of to the steel because the diffusion coefficient of carbon, impacted by the viscosity of slag and surface tension between slag and melted steel, is larger in the slag than in the steel. The viscosity of slag is about 2.54Pa·s and the surface tension between slag and steel is about 490mN/m.