— Steel scrap is used as coolant since excess heat is

available.
— The refining is complete in about 20-25 minutes of
oxygen blowing and a tap to tap time of 40-60 minutes
is needed
— The classical LD or the modified LD process, both
because of oxygen refining, are often used to make soft
steels for flat products.
— Being very fast in refining, LD process does not find
enough time for effective sulphur removal during
refining. Any attempt to remove sulphur results in
high basicity for which extra lime has to be charged.
— To remove sulphur, external desulphurisation of
molten iron in transfer ladles is done (pre treatment).
— As the oxygen jet travels through
the convertor atmosphere it carries
some of the ambient medium along
with it. This is much less in
supersonic core but is substantial
in sonic portion of the jet. Supersonic Core

— The composition of jet, at the

point, where it strikes the bath, Subsonic Core
depends on the blowing rate,
height of lance etc. It could be only
60% oxygen, and the remainder
being practically CO + CO2.
 Larger vol can be used

— As the jet strikes the bath, it results in stirring of the

bath. The bath circulates radically outwards on the
surface and upward on the vertical process. The
stirring of bath coupled with exothermic reaction
results in dissolution of scrap.
— The rate of dissolution of scrap depends upon size,
blowing conditions, vessel design, temperature and
composition of hot metal etc.
— Deeper bath are inferior to shallow ones because of
lesser turbulence in deeper baths.
— In spite of using a supersonic jet the kinetic energy of
the jet is not enough to cause enough mixing of the
slag and as a result the bath suffers from significant
gradients in temperature and composition which is in
a way responsible for periodic ejections and slopping
and thus loss of yield.
— The rate of dissolution of lime in slag can be increased
by increasing FeO content of the slag, retaining a part
of the previous slag, adding a little of dolomite in the
beginning and increasing the reactivity of lime.

— Burnt lime is made in rotary kilns where the reactivity

cannot be changed. This leads to inconsistency in
desulphurisation of the bath during refining.
— Removal of silicon is quite fast and is more or less
complete in six minutes after the commencement of
the blow.
— Manganese comes down concurrently with silicon up
to a certain point and it remains there for the rest of
the blow except that some reversion may take place
towards the end of the blow.
— Carbon and phosphorous oxidize together and the
process of oxidation starts after a few minutes of
blowing.
Removal of impurities during blow.
— There are two distinct zones of refining in a LD vessel
viz. the reactions in the emulsion and in the bulk
phase.
— The contribution of bulk refining is dominant in the
beginning since emulsion is yet to form properly.
— Substantial decarburisation of carbon can occur
because of its free exposure to an oxidizing gas,
particularly in the beginning.
— As the emulsion builds up the emulsion refining
attains a dominant role.
— The bulk phase refining again dominates towards the
end.
— Towards the end of refining, rate of decarburisation is
no more controlled by rate of supply of oxidizing
gases.
— It is controlled by carbon content, which is low.
— The decarburisation rate begins to fall since not
enough CO2 is formed to sustain the emulsion from
within.
— The high refining rates in the LD process can be attributed
to the formation of hot spot at the impact area of the jet.

— The high velocity jet tears off small droplets of metal from
the bath and throw them up in the vessel atmosphere. The
presence of thin slag and slag-gas matrix inside the vessel
leads to the formation of metal-slag-gas emulsion. It
increases the interfacial area of the metal-slag, metal-gas
and gas-slag systems tremendously. E.g. the actual
interfacial area in a 100t LD vessel is at least 7500m2
compared to apparent bath area being 12-14 m2 only.
— The amount of emulsion formed depends on the blowing
conditions, metal composition, quality and quantity of the
slag, temp. etc.
— The formation of emulsion manifests itself in the form of
sparking and sloping from the vessels. As the emulsion
level builds up to a certain extent with the progress of
refining, sloping from the LD vessel takes place uniformly
all around the vessel.
— There are 2 distinct zones of refining viz. the reaction in
the emulsion and the bulk phase.
— The contribution of bulk refining i.e. refining in impact
zone and at the bulk slag-metal interface, is dominant in
the beginning.
— As the emulsion builds up the emulsion refining attains a
dominant role.