ISSN 00360295, Russian Metallurgy (Metally), Vol. 2010, No. 6, pp. 469–474. © Pleiades Publishing, Ltd., 2010.

Original Russian Text © A.N. Smirnov, V.M. Safonov, D.V. Proskurenko, K.E. Pismarev, 2009, published in Elektrometallurgiya, 2009, No. 7, pp. 17–22.

MANUFACTURE OF FERROUS
AND NONFERROUS METALS

Distribution of Metal Particles in a Slag during Argon Blowing

of a Melt in a Ladle
A. N. Smirnov, V. M. Safonov, D. V. Proskurenko, and K. E. Pismarev
Donetsk National Technical University, Donetsk, Ukraine
OAO Alchevsk Integrated Works, Ukraine

Abstract—The distribution of metal particles in a slag is studied during argon blowing of steel in a ladle. It is
established that the fraction of the metallic phase in the top slag layer is 3.5–5 times smaller than that in the
middle and bottom layers. A microscopic analysis of the fraction composition and the geometric shape of the
metallic particles show that all portions of the slag part of samples contain significantly larger amounts (by a
factor of approximately 4–5) of irregular plane particles along with fine spherical particles.
DOI: 10.1134/S0036029510060029

INTRODUCTION
Argon blowing stirring of a melt in a ladle through
blowing units installed in the ladle bottom is a neces
sary technological operation during outoffurnace
treatment of steel: this operation increases the rate of
chemical reactions and influences the time of averag
ing the temperature and chemical composition of steel
in a liquid bath [1–3].
During outoffurnace treatment, the metal melt
surface is covered with a liquid synthetic slag; therefore,
the intensification of metal stirring in the zone adjacent
to the slag is of a great technological importance. In
relation to an increase in the phase stirring power and an
increase in the contact surface area, argon stirring favors
chemical reactions (among them, desulfurization),
which permits a substantial increase in the efficiency of
slag utilization.
The slag–metal contact surface area increases
when a metal–slag emulsion forms at the boundary
between the contacting phases. For example, desulfu
rization is known to be due to sulfur transport through
the slag/metal interface; in this case, the transition
rate of sulfur from the metal to slag is proportional to
the sulfur concentration in the metal and the interfa
cial contact area [4, 5].
The role of metallic particles in the intensification
of steel refining, where the mass transfer through the
interface is a factor limiting the reaction, was repeat
edly considered [6–8]. However, we have little infor
mation on the behavior of the interface during blowing
in a steelteeming ladle, and the mechanism of the
metal mass transfer to a slag layer was predominantly
investigated on physical models.
According to these investigations, the mass transfer
of a metallic phase to a slag layer during bubbling can
be described by the following three main models: the
single bubble model [9], the foam cluster model [10],
and the indirect dispersion model [11, 12]. According
to the first and second models, the mass transfer
occurs via the failure of the metal films covering bub
bles that pass through the interface with the formation
of an emulsion of metallic particles in the slag. The
indirect dispersion model is represented by a slag layer
located around the free zone of the metal melt surface
in the form of individual drops, which rotate during
stirring and entrain a portion of metal with formation
of a socalled slag–metal matrix [8, 13].
Generalizing these investigations, we can assume
that a limited zone of intense bubbling forms on the
metal melt surface at the site of the former gas bubbles
with the sizes proportional to the blowinggas flow
rate; this zone substantially influences the chemical
reaction rate between the slag and metal.
The aim of this work is to refine the concept of the
slag/metal interface state in the region of intense bub
bling and to estimate the behavior of metallic drops, as
applied to the blowing of metal in steelteeming ladles.
EXPERIMENTAL
To obtain information on the state of the interface
in the region of intense bubbling disposed around the
region of the socalled open eye (Fig. 1), we performed
sampling from the interface in a steelteeming ladle
using a sampler of a unique design (Fig. 2).
The device (sampler) used for melt sampling con
sists of mobile sampling tube 1 fixed before sampling
by trigger device 2, which is a loop with a flexible
metallic filament, attached to the top portion of the
sampling tube. Sampling tube 1 is placed in guiding
tube 3 to which metallic bottom 6 with bulge 7 is fixed
with fastener 4 and four metallic rods 5 10 mm in

469
470 SMIRNOV et al.

Place of sampling

Place of free metal melt surface

Fig. 1. (a) Appearance of the 300t steelteeming ladle and (b) the place of metal sampling.

3
1
4

5
Slag

7 Metal

(a) (b)

Fig. 2. Unit for melt sampling from a metallurgical vessel: (a) longitudinal section and (b) the same section after sampling (1–7,
see text).

diameter. The bulge has the form of a conical body of
revolution whose top is directed toward sampling
tube 1, and the apex angle of the bulge 7 is 110°–120°.
Before sampling, the sampling tube is placed inside
the guiding tube and is kept in the lifted position by the
trigger device. During sampling, the metallic bottom is
immersed into the melt to a depth that should not
exceed the height of the rods interrelated to the fas
tener. Then, the trigger device is actuated, and the
sampling tube moves down under its weight and cuts
off a melt portion at the slag/metal interface; in this

RUSSIAN METALLURGY (METALLY) Vol. 2010 No. 6

 DISTRIBUTION OF METAL PARTICLES IN A SLAG DURING ARGON BLOWING
(а)
Fig. 3. Appearance of a metallic melt sample (a) opening and (b) its section.
case, a melt sample is reliably fixed by the conical
bulge of the metallic bottom.
The peculiarity of the sampler operation is that, at
the moment of sampling, the sampling tube should
provide rapid accumulation of a portion of the sample
heat to achieve the temperature at which the slag vis
cosity is sufficient to hold metal particles present in the
slag. To solve this problem, the samplingtube wall
should have an optimal thickness.
According to thermal calculations, we found that
the thickness of the sampling tube wall providing a
rapid decrease in the slag fluidity should be no less
than 10–15 mm provided that the inside diameter of
the tube is 5–8 its thickness. In this case, the sampling
tube should be fabricated from steels with a high ther
mal conductivity. In our opinion, carbon and low
alloy steels are most suitable under the experiment
conditions.
The experiments on melt sampling from the
slag/metal interface were performed under conditions
of the converter shop of OAO Alchevsk Integrated
Works from a 300t steelteeming ladle with a bath
depth of 4750 mm and an average diameter of
3765 mm and two blowing units mounted in the ladle
bottom at a distance of half of its radius. The blowing
gas flow rate during sampling was 600 l/min for each
sample. The samples were taken on completion of
steel heating (23–25 min) and after the supply of slag
forming materials (800 kg calcium hydroxide and
106 kg fluorspar). Five samples were taken from two
ladles.
Before sampling, we estimated the possible depth of
slag layer from the amount of introduced slagforming
materials. During sampling, it was 90–150 mm
depending on the sampler position. In this case, the
sampler immersion depth was specified so that the steel
column height in a sample was 80–100 mm. After sam
pling, the sampler was immersed into a vessel with water
RUSSIAN METALLURGY (METALLY) Vol. 2010
471
(b)
for 80–90 s for further solidification and cooling of the
sample. Thereafter, the sampling tube containing the
sample was cooled in air to normal temperature.
The cooled sampling tube containing the sample
was open on a lathe. The tube was easily separated
from the sample, and the clean surface of the sample
indicated that cooling and solidification occurred
quite rapidly, without partial melting of the sampling
medium walls.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The metallic portion of the sample is shown in
Fig. 3. The top part of the metallic portion has a
clearly pronounced conical surface with the top
directed down. This fact should be considered as evi
dence that the sample metallic portion was solidified
quite rapidly, and this prevented the equalization of
the metal melt surface over the horizontal plane during
flowing down. Correspondingly, we can assume that
the metal drops existing in the slag had no time to fall
to the metallic bath after the sampling tube was
dropped.
The slag portion of the samples was separated in the
transverse direction into three parts, each of which was
thoroughly grinded to extract metallic particles by
magnetic separation. According to chemical analysis
of the slag portion from one of the samples (Table 1),
the slag in the place of sampling in the ladle is chemi
cally homogeneous, which indicates that the slag was
well mixed.
The metallic fraction extracted from the slag was
weighed with an analytical balance. The distribution of
the total mass of steel particles over the height of one
of the samples is presented in Table 2. It is established
that the fraction of the metallic phase in the top layer
is 3.5–5 times smaller than that in the middle and bot
tom layers. In this case, the fractions of the metallic
phase in the middle and the bottom layers differ insig
No. 6
472 SMIRNOV et al.

Table 1. Chemical composition (%) of the parts of slag samples

Distance from the slag/metal interface, mm CaO SiO2 Al2O3 MgO FeO MnO SO3 P2O5

Bottom part, 0–44 59.7 18.7 11.8 7.85 0.37 0.29 1.25 0.005

Middle part, 44–98 59.0 18.6 11.7 7.70 0.56 0.30 1.28 0.007

Top part, 98–136 59.2 18.9 11.6 7.77 0.45 0.28 1.23 0.007

Table 2. Distribution of metallic particles over the slag sample height

Fraction of a metallic phase in

Parts of slag sample Mass of each part, g Mass of metallic particles in slag, g
the total slag sample mass, %

Top 246 0.098 0.04

Middle 345 0.483 0.14

Bottom 248 0.446 0.18

nificantly. Apparently, this should be associated with
that the fact that steel particles involved into the slag by
rising streams mainly reach the middle slag layer; then,
they begin to go down in it. Rapid return of the metal
lic particles to the liquid bath is prevented by stirring of
the slag and its macroscopic structure, which consists
of individual drops and their conglomerates due to the
high surface tension of the slag.
Microscopic analysis of the fractional composition
and the geometric shape of the metallic particles
shows that all parts of the slag portion of the samples
contain a large amount of flat particles of irregular
shape (Fig. 5) along with fine spherical particles
(Fig. 4). The ratio of the number of spherical particles
to the number of particles with an irregular shape is
1 : (4–5). It should be noted that the spherical metallic
particles have relatively small sizes (from 50 to
270 µm), and their distribution clearly exhibits a ten
dency toward a decrease in the number of particles and
an increase in their sizes when the slag/metal interface
is approached. The plane particles of an irregular
shape are from 150–500 µm to 6 mm in size. The size
distribution of the metallic particles is shown in Fig. 6.
It should be noted that there are certain preferable
size ranges for both spherical particles and plane par
ticles of an irregular shape. Coarse metallic particles
have an irregular plane shape, and fine particles have a
spherical geometric shape. This fact confirms the
assumption that the liquid metallic particles existing in
the slag interact mechanically with moving slag drops.
In this case, more mechanically stable fine drops of
liquid steel can be disposed in dead zones between sig

(а) (b) (c)

Fig. 4. Spherical metallic particles in a slag sample (magnification ×1).

RUSSIAN METALLURGY (METALLY) Vol. 2010 No. 6

 DISTRIBUTION OF METAL PARTICLES IN A SLAG DURING ARGON BLOWING
×4
×4
×4
Fig. 5. Plane metallic particles of an irregular geometric shape in various parts of a slag sample at various magnifications.
nificantly coarser slag drops. Coarser steel drops turn
out to be compressed between slag drops, which causes
deformation of their geometric shape. In this case,
more intense motion of slag drops is accompanied by
their larger deformation.
CONCLUSIONS
To estimate the behavior of slag and steel in the
region of the bath level adjacent to open eye during
argon blowing in a 30t ladle, we used a specialpur
pose sampler to take samples of the slag and steel
involving the volume from the free surface to a depth
of 0.1–0.15 m lower than the slag/metal interface.
RUSSIAN METALLURGY (METALLY) Vol. 2010
473
(c)
×2 ×1
(b)
×2 ×1
(а)
×2 ×1
It was established that the fraction of the metallic
phase in the top slag layer is 3.5–5 times smaller than
those in the middle and bottom layers. According to
the data of microscopic analysis of the fractional com
position and the geometric shape of metallic particles,
all parts of the slag portion of the samples contain large
amounts (by about 4–5 times) of plane particles of an
irregular geometric shape along with fine spherical
particles. The coarse metallic particles have an irregu
lar plane shape, and the fine particles have a spherical
geometric shape. This fact confirms the assumption
that the liquid metallic particles existing in the slag
interact mechanically with moving slag drops. In this
No. 6
474 SMIRNOV et al.

40 37 36

metallic particles in the

(a)

Number of spherical
35

given size range, %

30
25
20
20
15
10
5 4 3
1
0
From 0 From 51 From 101 From 151 From 201 From 251
to 50 to 100 to 150 to 200 to 250 to 300
50
of an irregular geometric shape

43 (b)
Number of metallic particles

45
in the given size range, %

40
35
31
30
25
20 17
15
10 8
5 1
0
From 100 From 501 From 1001 From 2001 more than
to 500 to 1000 to 2000 to 5000 5001
Metallic particle size, µm

Fig. 6. Size distributions of (a) spherical metallic particles and (b) metallic particles of an irregular geometric shape.

case, rapid return of metallic particles to the liquid
bath is prevented by stirring of the slag and its macro
scopic structure, which consists of individual drops
and their conglomerates due to the high surface ten
sion of the slag.
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