The Wetting between Solid Iron and Liquid Slag

Abstract

In order to study the wetting between solid iron and liquid slag in the softening and the melting zone in iron blast furnaces, the contact angles of sessile drops of CaO-SiO₂, CaO-SiO₂-Al₂O₃ and CaO-SiO₂-MgO liquid slags on solid iron plates were measured in CO-CO₂ gas mixtures at 1723 K. The following results were obtained. (1) The contact angle increases with the increase in basicity of slags from 0.5 to 1.0 under the same oxygen partial pressure. The addition of Al₂O₃ and MgO has no significant effect. (2) The contact angle decreases gradually with the increase in FeO content, independently of the kind of those slags. (3) The liquid slags containing FeO more then 30 mol% perfectly wet the surface of solid iron.