Our workmen believe that cast iron melted in an electric furnace cools more rapidly than cupola iron. The belief is of course hardly comprehensive from the scientific stand point. The present research was undertaken to see if it is true or not by making thermal analysis of two differently melted irons in a large scale, using a hand ladle containing 75 kgs of molten iron. Various precautions were made to get the same cooling condition in each measurement, i. e. the size of the ladle, its thickness of lining, the drying of the ladle, the temperature of it just before the reception of molten iron, the teeming temperature of iron into the ladle, and the position of the hot junction of a platinum and platinum-rhodium thermo-couple having a length of two meters. The mean cooling velocity of that part of cooling curves between 1300°C and 1250°C of molten iron was determined. The rate of cooling above 1300°C was excluded as the thermal equilibrium between iron and the ladle, the ladle and the air was not settled, and the rate below 1250°C was also excluded owing to the heat of evolution of primary and eutectic crystallization. The measurements were made with respect to 4 heats of electric iron and 12 heats of cupola iron. Comparing the rate of cooling we found out that electric iron had higher cooling velocity than cupola iron contrary to our expectation. The fact can only be explained by the evolution of more gases in electric iron which received higher degree of superheating than cupola iron. The gases evolved agitate molten iron by the invigoration of convection current, which accelerates the cooling of iron in the ladle. In addition to this it may be suspected that the liability of oxide film formation on the surface of molten electric iron has made our workmen to have an impression that it cools more rapidly than cupola iron, because the fluidity of iron is thereby decreased irrespectively of its true temperature. It may be concluded that if the electric furnace melting of cast iron was more skillfully carried out than the present practice, we shall have surely the same cooling rate as that of cupola iron.
View full abstract