Oxygen In Steel Making

  • FS Metal
  • Jan 16, 2023
  • Blog

The use of oxygen blowing method of steelmaking has become the main method of steelmaking and has been adopted by different countries. The method of oxygen-blowing steelmaking can be mainly divided into converter pure oxygen top blowing or bottom blowing, electric arc furnace steelmaking, and flat furnace steelmaking. According to statistics, the use of converter steelmaking needs to consume oxygen 50 ~ 60m3 / T, electric arc furnace steelmaking needs to consume oxygen 10 ~ 25m3 / T, and flat furnace steelmaking With the continuous improvement of the steel-making process, large electric furnaces have adopted various technologies to strengthen oxygen supply, which effectively improves the efficiency of steel making and reduce electricity consumption. However, the consumption of oxygen has increased significantly, from 8m3/T to 35~60m3/T, and the purity of oxygen is 99.6%. In order to avoid the situation of oxygen absorption in steel, many steel mills will require the pressure of the delivery pipe to be more than 2MPa and the working pressure to be more than 1.2MPa.

Why Use Oxygen Instead Of Air To Steel Making?

The present oxygen top-blowing converter is developed from the air converter. Air contains only about 20% of oxygen, and the efficiency of blowing with air is low and the control is difficult. At the same time, the quality of the steel produced was not good, and because there was no way to separate the oxygen from the air, there was no way to produce large quantities of oxygen, causing the steelmaking technology to stagnate. As soon as people were able to separate oxygen from the air, oxygen was immediately put into the steelmaking process. Experiments have proved that oxygen converter steelmaking has very great advantages over air, especially in terms of steelmaking efficiency, which is three times higher compared to air converter, while the steelmaking process is stable and the quality of steel is improved.

Application Of Oxygen In Steelmaking

  1. Used for production processes in primary steelmaking processes and secondary steelmaking processes.

  2. Used in the blast furnace ironmaking process to collect air from the blast furnace.

  3. For the treatment of blocked tap holes in blast furnaces.

  4. For oxygen fuel cutting of castings in continuous casting machines.

  5. Used in different burners to collect air for combustion.

  6. Effective raising of furnace temperature.

Oxygen In The Later Stages Of Steelmaking

In the late stages of steelmaking, too much oxygen will make the molten steel contains more oxides, affecting the purity of the molten steel. Therefore, the molten steel needs to be deoxidized, and the use of silicon deoxidizers can effectively deal with the oxygen in the molten steel, because silicon and oxygen can produce silicon dioxide gas, through the flue to eliminate, thus significantly reducing the oxygen in the molten steel, reduce the oxide generation. The better way is to use deoxidizing materials such as ferrosilicon 75, ferrosilicon 72, ferrosilicon 65, etc. to deoxidize the molten steel, which can significantly improve the efficiency of molten steel deoxidizing, and It can promote the fluidity of the molten steel, reduce the blockage of the outlet, change the form of inclusions so that more impurities float on the surface of the molten steel, easy to clean impurities and improve the purity of the molten steel.

Advantages Of Ferrosilicon For Steelmaking Deoxidation

  1. Fast deoxygenation speed.

  2. Good deoxygenation effect.

  3. Low price and high-cost performance.

  4. Stable chemical reaction.

  5. High safety factor.

  6. Improve steel production.

  7. Lower steelmaking costs.