Hot Metal Treatment

The hot metal treatment is essential for maintaining the high steel quality by controlling impurity levels. Primetals Technologies provides comprehensive solutions for hot metal treatment, ensuring low levels of impurities such as sulfur and phosphor to meet stringent quality standards. Proper preparation of hot metal before the steelmaking phase is crucial to maximize converter productivity and reduce downstream refining costs. Primetals Technologies offers solutions including desulfurization, silicon removal, dephosphorization, and other specialized processes to reduce vanadium, chromium, titanium, and manganese content.

Steelmakers today face the challenge of increasing quality requirements for their final products while the quality of raw material inputs declines. For instance, the fracture toughness of steel has improved over the decades by reducing the sulfur and phosphorus content limits. However, processing iron ore with higher phosphorus levels offers economic benefits due to its lower cost compared to high-quality ore. Similarly, coal high in sulfur is economically advantageous. To address these challenges, hot metal treatment processes have been developed. The primary goal is to remove unwanted elements from the hot metal in a separate process step before charging it to the LD converter for refining. The most critical elements to remove are phosphorus and sulfur, with vanadium and titanium being secondary concerns. Hot metal treatment allows the steelmaking process to be divided into simpler, more controllable steps, enhancing the robustness and reliability of steel production.

Over the years, Primetals Technologies has continuously developed and enhanced its solutions, now offering a complete portfolio for hot metal treatment. For desulfurization, solutions include treatment in the torpedo car, desulfurization in the ladle via mono or co-injection, and mechanical mixing with a stirrer in the KR process. For dephosphorization, treatment solutions in the converter or ladle have been developed and successfully implemented in several plants.

Benefits of Desulfurization and Other Hot Metal Treatments

• Ensures low levels of impurities like sulfur and phosphorus for high-quality steel
• Maximizes converter productivity and reduces downstream refining costs
• Offers economic benefits by processing lower-cost raw materials
• Simplifies the steelmaking process into controllable steps
• Provides a comprehensive portfolio of solutions for various impurity removal processes