1999 Volume 39 Issue 9 Pages 905-912
The combination of plasma heating and the powder blowing decarburization method was applied to remove copper and tin, which are "tramp" elements in relation to recycling, from molten iron in a large scale experiment. Plasma heating was adopted as the local heating method and combined with a weak oxidizing powder blowing method under a commonly used reduced pressure of about 0.13-0.65 kPa for their removal.
The results demonstrated that the method could accelerate the efficient removal of copper and tin from iron melted from scrap under a reduced pressure compared with only the powder blowing method. The apparent removal rates of copper and tin increased as 2-3 times and 4 times much as that without plasma heating. The plasma heating is thought to compensate for the heat loss at the reaction site by this method.