A Prospective Way to Reduce Emissions in Secondary Steel Making Metallurgy by Application of Functionalized Doloma Carbon Refractories

Doloma and doloma carbon refractories are the standard refractory systems applied in AOD (argon oxygen decarburization) and VOD (vacuum oxygen decarburization) vessels in the secondary metallurgy to produce stainless steel. This refractory system is connected with metallurgical benefits such as high oxidic stability of its oxides, and the ability to bond sulfur from the hot metal. Production and application of carbon‐bonded refractories is directly linked with environmental harmful emissions in the broadest sense. In the center of this work is the aspect of increased residual carbon content of the binder resin due to TiO ₂ addition. Furthermore, this work has observed the applicability of TiO ₂ ‐treated bricks in AOD converter. The increased residual carbon content of the binder resin connected with improved mechanical, physical, and thermomechanical properties due to sub‐micro scaled TiO ₂ and metallic antioxidant addition offers the feasibility to reduce the total carbon content without downgrading the brick properties. This aspect has not been observed yet, and is of high interest with respect to reduced emissions and environmental friendly refractories. Previous works have investigated the influence of TiO ₂ on other carbon‐bonded refractory systems, such as alumina carbon and magnesia carbon. As illustrated in this work and previous work, TiO ₂ is working completely different in the doloma carbon system when compared with other systems.