Metallurgical characteristics of refining slag used for high manganese steel

High manganese steel has excellent mechanical properties, which has garnered much attention. Whereas the research on the refining slag used for high Mn steel is very limited. In this study, the metallurgical characteristics of refining slag for high Mn steel were investigated based on thermodynamic calculation with FactSage 6.3 and slag-metal equilibrium reaction in MgO crucible. The calculated liquid zones of T ≤ 1873 K of CaO-SiO2-Al2O3-8%MgO-5%MnO system are located in the middle region of pseudo-ternary CaO-SiO2-Al2O3. For CaO-SiO2-Al2O3-8%MgO-MnO system, the apparent liquid zone at 1873 K enlarges with MnO content in slag increasing, and moves toward the direction of SiO2 and Al2O3 content increasing. For CaO-SiO2-Al2O3-MgO-MnO system, the liquidus zone shrinks with the basicity increasing, and moves toward the direction of Al2O3 content increasing. The measured MnO content in top slag reacted with high Mn steel was much higher than that reacted with conventional steels. In present experiments, the MnO content was around 5% when CaO-SiO2-Al2O3-MgO slag with basicity of 4 was in equilibrium with high Mn steel (Mn = 10, 20%) at 1873 K. The inclusions in master high Mn steel were mainly MnO type. After reaction with top slag, most inclusions transformed to MnO-SiO2 system and MnO-Al2O3-MgO system, in which the MnO content still shared the majority. Thermodynamic calculations show that SiO2 in top slag can be reduced by [Mn] in steel to supply [Si] under present experimental condition, which subsequently reacts with [O] in steel bath to form SiO2.