A Novel Technique for Determination of Flow Characteristics of Blast Furnace Slag

Abstract

A study of flow characteristics of blast furnace slag helps determine its softening and flow (liquid-mobility) temperatures. The slag with a narrow difference between the two temperatures is termed a “Short Slag”. Its formation ensures higher rates of slag-metal reactions with the trickle of the slag soon after its formation exposing fresh mass for faster reactions, the trickling slag, creating fresh interfaces facilitating slag-metal exchanges. In the present work, a novel technique is adopted to determine the flow characteristics of blast furnace slag obtained from different industrial blast furnaces. It is seen that the results so obtained agree very closely with the values obtained from adopting conventional methods of determining the liquidus temperature using “slag atlas”. It is observed that under the range of compositions studied a high C/S ratio combined with a high MgO content in the slag is beneficial to the B.F. process as it renders a “short slag”.