Some aspects of recycling of rest products and slag foaming in the EAF during stainless steel production

Abstract: An efficient stainless steel making industry is defined by different factors such as an efficient utilisation of energy in the Electric Arc Furnace (EAF). This requires a good by slag foaming practice and an utilisation of waste products from own production facilities. In the following study, briquettes applied for a combined slag foaming and waste product recycling in the EAF were investigated in both laboratory and industrial scales. More specifically, briquettes were characterised and used for slag foaming in the EAF. The recipes of the briquettes were made based on a literature review and previous experience. Afterwards, the composition and density of briquettes were defined and compared to calculated data. Moreover, weight reduction experiments were made on a laboratory scale at temperatures up to 1500°C in an argon atmosphere in order to characterise the products (metal, slag and gas) produced by briquettes. The calculations were also compared to experimental data. Thereafter, briquettes with different densities and pet-coke addition were tested on an industrial scale to study slag foaming in the EAF process during a stainless steel production. The slag foaming tendencies were determined based on visual estimations of slag foaming, determinations of the slag density before and after additions of different briquettes, and by calculating a foaming index.  Moreover, the influence of the main parameters of the briquettes (composition, density) and the furnace slag (composition, basicity and etc.) on slag foaming was studied.  Investigation of briquettes made on laboratory and industrial scales provided the following main results: the density of briquettes can successfully be verified, briquettes have different mechanical properties depending on the materials used for production of briquettes, briquettes yield different amounts of metal and gas. Moreover, it was found that the heavy briquettes (containing FeCr) produce about half the amount of gas compared to the light briquettes (without FeCr). The main part of the gas was generated during the first 2-3 min. Also, the valuable metals can be recovered from briquettes; recipes of briquettes can be optimized based on the amount of metal droplets in briquettes and the total utilisation of carbon.  In addition, it was found that both heavy and light briquettes can be used for slag foaming. The highest slag foaming rate was obtained for slags with a basicity in the range of 1.31-1.49.