Physical Chemistry Aspects of Liquid Metal Alloys, Molten Oxides and Waste Materials

该研究计划的设计目标是：1)发展与液态金属合金加工有关的基础知识，以及与从废料中回收有用产品有关的氧化物熔体的行为；以及2)专题研究，为学生提供高温实验技术和材料表征程序方面的基础知识和实践培训经验，这些专题将非常适合他们在学术界、政府实验室和工业部门的专业职业生涯。近年来，申请人的实验室一直在进行研究，以研究悬浮不锈钢液滴用CO2-Ar混合气体进行脱碳的动力学。结果发现，传质关联式虽然被广泛使用，但并不能描述从液滴实验中获得的数据。这在以前是不被理解的。基于这些发现，将开展研究，以考察反应气相内不同温度梯度对实验确定的与不同合金系统相关的动力学参数的影响。在这方面，将进行液滴实验，以考察用含有二氧化碳的混合气体从高炉铁水成分的悬浮液滴中同时去除杂质碳和硫的可能性。脱硫实验也将在较低的温度下进行，即用铜或镍取代铁溶剂。这些实验的结果与数值模拟一起，将允许建立新的传质关联式，用于表征与暴露在扩展温度范围内的反应气体混合物中的悬浮液滴有关的精制反应。除了涉及气体-金属相互作用的精炼反应外，炼钢过程还基于对渣化学的控制，渣化学反过来又对渣的性能从而对钢的质量产生深远的影响。申请人最近的研究包括对赤泥的调查，赤泥是从铝土矿中提取氧化铝过程中产生的一种废物，是钢铁行业矿渣添加剂的潜在来源。从铝工业产生的废物中创新地生产用于钢铁工业的精炼助熔剂具有重要的环境和经济意义。在拟议的研究中，将评估用一种新的机械活化还原方法从赤泥中回收铁的可行性，并将首次研究从剩余废物中产生保护渣的可能性。此外，还将探讨熔融氧化物的可测量参数(例如电导率)与精炼能力之间的相关性，以便为生产过程的在线控制系统提供基础。

This research program has been designed with the following objectives in mind: 1) Development of fundamental knowledge that pertains to the processing of liquid metal alloys and the behaviour of oxide melts related to the recovery of useful products from waste materials; and 2) Research on thematic topics that will provide students with both fundamental knowledge and hands-on training experience in high temperature experimental techniques and materials characterization procedures that will fit them well for professional careers within academia, government laboratories and the industrial sector. In recent years, studies have been conducted within the applicant's laboratory to investigate the kinetics of decarburization of levitated stainless steel droplets with CO2-Ar gas mixtures. It was found that mass transfer correlations, although widely employed, do not describe the data obtained from droplet experiments. This was not understood before. Based on these findings, studies will be carried out to examine the influence of different temperature gradients within a reactive gas phase on experimentally determined kinetic parameters associated with different alloy systems. In this context, droplet experiments will be performed to examine the potential for simultaneously removing the impurities carbon and sulphur from levitated droplets of blast furnace hot metal composition with gas mixtures that contain CO2. Desulphurization experiments will also be conducted at lower temperatures where the iron solvent is replaced with copper or nickel. Results from these experiments together with numerical modelling will permit new mass transfer correlations to be established for characterization of refining reactions associated with levitated droplets exposed to reactive gas mixtures over an extended temperature range. In addition to refining reactions involving gas-metal interactions, steelmaking processes are based on control of slag chemistry, which in turn has a profound influence on slag performance and hence on steel quality. Recent studies by the applicant have included investigation of red mud, a waste material produced in the process of alumina extraction from bauxite, as a potential source of slag additives for the steel industry. The innovative production of refining fluxes for the steel industry from waste products generated by the aluminum industry has important environmental and also economic implications. During the proposed research, the feasibility of recovering iron from red mud by a novel mechanically activated reduction method will be evaluated and for the first time, the potential for generating mold fluxes from the residual waste material will be investigated. In addition, the possibility of a correlation between a measurable parameter of the molten oxide (e.g. electrical conductivity) and refining capacities will be explored in order to provide the basis for an online control system for production processes.