| During continuous casting of steel, the properties of mold fluxes strongly affect the casting performance, steel quality and environment of the casting operation. In this study, a high temperature microscopy technique was used to investigate the melting behaviour of mold fluxes, a fixed-bed reactor with infrared off-gas analyzer was employed to measure the reactivity of different types of carbon found as ingredients in mold fluxes, and a drip test method was used to determine their melting rate.; For the mold fluxes investigated during this study, the results showed that the melting temperatures first increased and then decreased with an increase in CaO/SiO2 ratio. It was also found that the carbon reactivity is different for different types of carbon, the free carbon was a dominant factor in governing the melting rate of the fluxes, and the melting rate increased with increasing carbon reactivity and with decreasing carbon content. |
