Monitoring the oxygen removal process at the final stage of melting steel

This article deals with removing oxygen at the final stage of steel smelting in arc steel-making furnaces. It is shown that the remaining oxygen during crystallization forms floccules and significantly reduces the quality of the finished metal. During the subsequent metal processing by pressure on these floccules, the metal is torn apart and makes it impossible to obtain a steel sheet. Deoxidation is performed with expensive ferroalloys, and their consumption must be minimized. To achieve economic efficiency, it has been proposed to use recycled aluminum slag as a relatively inexpensive local deoxidizer. To optimize the deoxidizer consumption, a rapid analysis method was developed using the electromotive force (EMF) determination to determine the oxygen activity in liquid steel. As a result of this approach, we expect to enhance the quality of the steel while reducing production costs.