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Analysis of Arc Emission Spectra of Stainless Steel Electric

Arc Furnace Slag Affected by Fluctuating Arc Voltage


Matti Aula,a* Ari Mäkinen,b Timo Fabritiusa
a
Laboratory of Process Metallurgy, Box 4300, 90014 University of Oulu, Finland
b
Electron Spectroscopy Group, Box 3000, 90014 University of Oulu, Finland

Control of chromium oxidation in the electric arc furnace (EAF) is a always a risk in the harsh process conditions of the EAF,
significant problem in stainless steel production due to variations which calls for passive methods of on-line slag analysis.
of the chemical compositions in the EAF charge. One potential One potential method to accomplish this is to gather and
method to control chromium oxidation is to analyze the emission
analyze the light generated by the electric arc used to
spectrum of the electric arc in order to find indicators of rising
chromium content in slag. The purpose of this study was to
melt the scrap.
determine if slag composition can be gained by utilizing electric arc Optical emission spectroscopy has previously been
emission spectra in the laboratory environment, despite electric arc used as a real-time process control method in the
voltage fluctuations and varying slag composition. The purpose of coating industry and in laser welding.4,5 The emission
inducing voltage fluctuation was to simulate changes in the spectrum measurements in steelmaking have focused
industrial EAF process. The slag samples were obtained from on analyzing Linz-Donawitz (LD) and Creusot-Loire
Outokumpu Stainless Oy Tornio Works, and three different arc Uddeholm (CLU) converters.6,7 Few attempts have been
currents were used. The correlation analysis showed that the made to measure the EAF emission spectra in the
emission spectra offer numerous peak ratios with high correlations metallurgical industry. Veilette and Simard8 measured
to the X-ray fluorescence-measured slag CrOx/FeOx and MnO/SiO2
the emission spectrum of a pilot scale furnace for iron
ratios. These ratios are useful in determining if the reduction agents
have been depleted in the EAF. The results suggest that analysis of
and titanium ore smelting. They found that many of the
laboratory-scale electric arc emission spectra is suitable for lines observed showed signs of self-absorption and
indicating the high CrOx or MnO content of the slag despite the broadening.
arc fluctuations. Reliable analysis of other slag components was Process control with emission spectroscopy is based
not successful. on principles used in analytic optical emission spectros-
Index Headings: Emission spectroscopy; Direct current arc; DC arc; copy (OES). The difference between analytic OES
Correlation; Slag; Electric arc furnace; EAF. equipment and an industrial EAF is the fluctuation of
the emission intensity. The changes in arc current, fume
absorption, and arc visibility cause the emission
intensity to vary. This results in fluctuating intensity of
INTRODUCTION the emission spectra. The purpose of this study was to
analyze the possibility of gaining meaningful information
Interest in stainless steel electric arc furnace (EAF) about the slag composition ratios despite emission
slag composition has increased due to the costly fluctuations.
process of chromium oxidation. Steel is produced in
the EAF by melting steel scrap. Chromium is the main MATERIALS AND METHODS
alloying element of stainless steel, and it is usually
charged in the form of stainless steel scrap. Losing Experimental Setup. The EAF slag emission spec-
chromium to slag raises production costs and makes the trum was measured from a small-scale version of a
recycling of EAF slag more difficult.1 Chromium losses direct current (DC) arc furnace. The furnace configura-
can be prevented by addition of deoxidants, for example, tion is shown in Fig. 1. The arc is produced between two
ferrosilicon and coke. The problem is that the amount of graphite electrodes fixed to water-cooled copper con-
deoxidants in scrap steel is not known, which causes ductors. The sample is placed in a graphite crucible and
major chromium oxidation fluctuations between heats. inserted into the furnace from below. Light passes
The scrap fluctuation problem could be solved with slag through a fused silica furnace window and is collected
composition analysis methods, which provide informa- with an optic fiber.
tion on current slag composition. In an ideal case, the A Kemp Stick Master 1400 welding machine was used
measurement system should provide on-line information as a power source. The welding machine enables the
on slag compositions during the EAF process. control of the arc current, but the arc voltage varies
Recently, developments in laser-induced breakdown depending on the distance between the electrodes.
spectroscopy (LIBS) methods have made it possible to Selecting the arc current and changing the electrode
measure the compositions of the liquid steel and slag in distance induced voltage fluctuations. The fluctuations
situ.2,3 Introducing an active measurement device is were simulated in the fixed arc currents of 50, 75, and
100 A.
The furnace chamber was purged with argon. The
Received 18 March 2013; accepted 30 August 2013.
* Author to whom correspondence should be sent. E-mail: Matti.Aula@
measurements were conducted by first initiating the arc
oulu.fi. with a short electrode distance and then increasing the
DOI: 10.1366/13-07079 electrode distance by manual adjustment. After increas-

0003-7028/14/6801-0026/0
26 Volume 68, Number 1, 2014 Q 2014 Society for Applied Spectroscopy APPLIED SPECTROSCOPY
FIG. 2. Two types of slag sample grain sizes: (a) coarse, (b) fine.

fluorescence (XRF) analyzed slag compositions. All


oxidization states of iron and chromium oxides are
summed in Fe2O3 and Cr2O3 content; thus, they are
referred to as FeOx and CrOy. Minor slag components
have been removed from the analysis.

FIG. 1. Schematic picture of the laboratory DC arc furnace. THEORY AND CALCULATION
Correction of Spectral Data. The spectrum obtained
ing the electrode distance, the sample was raised to the
by the spectrometer contains aberrations caused by the
arc. The measurement device and methods are de-
quantum efficiency of the charge-coupled device (CCD),
scribed in detail by Mäkinen et al.9
the efficiency of the grating, and the transmission of the
A commercial Czerny-Turner spectrometer Andor
Shamrock i500 was used in the measurements. The optic cable. The height of the curve is enhanced by
Shamrock i500 offers multiple grating choices; from thermal radiation, which is proportional to the heat of the
these the grating with the widest spectral range (245–610 matter near the electric arc. Also, due to the dark
nm) was chosen. The selected grating had 150 lines/mm current, a certain background intensity can be observed
with 300 nm blaze, and it was used with a 10 lm slit. This even if there is no light coming to the CCD.12
configuration provided a pixel-to-pixel resolution of Measuring the spectrum with the aperture closed and
0.1782 nm and an optical resolution of 0.525 nm. The removing the reference spectrum from the actual
150 lines/mm grating was chosen since gaining infor- measured spectrum of the electric arc allowed for the
mation on as many peaks as possible was deemed more removal of the dark current. Quantum efficiency of the
important than the accuracy of a single peak. The CCD, the efficiency of the grating, and the transmission
spectrometer was used in high-capacity readout mode of the optical cable were corrected according to the data
with a readout rate of 50 kHz at 16 bit and an exposure obtained from the manufacturers. The effect of thermal
time of 0.0021 s. radiation was removed by approximating it with a fit
Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) Slag Samples. The main curve and subtracting the curve from the spectrum. The
role of slag in stainless steel EAF production is to collect photon flux caused by thermal radiation can be
the impurities in steel scrap. The liquid slag is formed in approximated with the equation:
the EAF when SiO2 in the furnace is dissolved by the
2c
added CaO. Usually, MgO is also added in the form of Mð; TÞ ¼ 4 ð1Þ
doloma to reduce refractory wear.10 The fourth major  ½ech=kT  1
EAF slag component is Al2O3, which enters the EAF as
metallic aluminum mixed in the scrap steel. Aluminum where M is the photon flux, T is the temperature in
has a high affinity for oxygen, which means that, at the degrees Kelvin, h is the Planck constant, c is the speed
end of the heat, virtually all metallic aluminum in the of light,  is the wavelength in nm, and k is the
scrap ends up in the slag as Al2O3. The content of MnO Boltzmann constant.13
and Cr2O3 in the slag may also rise depending on the The exact temperature near the electric arc was not
amount of deoxidants in the EAF.11 known, so the photon flux curves of different tempera-
The EAF slag samples were obtained from the EAFs at tures were calculated according to Eq. 1, and the best
Outokumpu Stainless Oy, Tornio Works. The samples fitting curve was selected. The temperature interval of
were taken from the ladle after the steel and the slag had the calculated curves was 5 K. The selection of the best
been poured out of the EAF and crushed to maximum fit was performed by proportioning the curve to the local
grain size of 10 mm. minimum near 509 nm and selecting the fit curve with the
The particle size and mineralogy of the samples lowest sum of square differences of minimums in the
varied significantly. Some samples had shards of nearly wavelength ranges 465–482 nm, 425–445 nm, and 515–
1 cm in length, and some were the size of very fine sand, 526 nm. Figure 3 shows an example of a raw spectrum
as can be seen in Fig. 2. for 75 A measurements and its photon flux fit. The
Five of the samples were obtained from production average of the last 15 corrected frames was chosen to
line 1 and the rest from line 2. Table I shows the X-ray represent each sample in the correlation analysis.

APPLIED SPECTROSCOPY 27
TABLE I. XRF analyzed compositions of 18 slag samples in mass percentages.

Production Sample
line number Cr2O3 Fe2O3 Al2O3 MgO CaO SiO2 MnO TiO2

1 1 7.8 1.5 3.8 6.3 44.4 28.1 3.0 1.7


1 2 8.6 1.5 4.6 4.1 39.7 32.5 4.4 2.2
1 3 5.2 1.7 9.4 9.8 30.4 31.4 2.7 2.9
1 4 7.6 1.6 7.8 8.6 31.8 31.1 4.4 2.1
1 5 5.4 1.3 4.4 6.3 42.5 30.5 2.9 2.1
2 6 2.1 1.3 10.0 4.4 53.5 23.4 0.7 2.9
2 7 2.0 1.4 10.1 4.3 53.4 23.6 0.6 2.4
2 8 2.3 1.2 14.4 5.3 43.3 25.3 1.5 2.7
2 9 8.6 1.3 14.3 3.9 39.6 23.5 3.3 2.2
2 10 8.5 1.4 15.8 3.7 39.8 22.7 3.1 2.2
2 11 8.0 1.4 15.4 3.9 39.6 23.5 3.0 2.3
2 12 5.6 1.5 10.5 4.6 44.7 24.4 2.6 2.0
2 13 7.9 1.6 9.1 4.8 46.1 23.3 2.3 1.9
2 14 2.5 1.2 9.5 5.5 47.9 25.9 1.4 1.9
2 15 2.5 1.3 16.8 6.1 40.7 24.5 1.4 2.2
2 16 5.0 1.5 9.5 8.0 40.3 26.1 1.8 1.8
2 17 4.7 1.3 8.4 7.7 41.3 27.0 2.3 2.0
2 18 2.2 1.3 11.8 9.1 37.4 27.2 1.5 3.1

Analysis of Spectral Data. The two main methods When the composition of the material is described with
used to analyze the spectral peak intensity are the ratios of its components, the reference peak and the
calculations of peak height and area. The use of peak peak of the studied component cannot be separated in
height is a simple and fast way to analyze peak intensity, the correlation analysis. The correlation between the
but it is more sensitive to measurement noise.14 In this measured peak ratios and the XRF analyzed slag
study, speed is a more important factor since the aim is composition ratios can be analyzed by calculating their
to analyze the spectral data in real time. Pearson product momentum correlations using the
Correlation Statistics. The effect of the variation of equation:
the excitation energy and the visibility conditions can be X
reduced by using peak intensity ratios instead of ðx  xÞðy  yÞ
absolute intensities. In this work, the best reference r¼X X ð2Þ
peak for each component is sought using correlation ðx  xÞ2 ðy  yÞ2
analysis, which shows the peak ratios least affected by
the variations of the arc voltage. where r is the Pearson product momentum correlation, x
The advantage of using the correlation method is that is the value of the sample population 1, x is the mean
it allows simultaneous analysis of the usefulness of value of the sample population 1, y is the value of the
multiple peaks. Correlation analysis disregards the sample population 2, and y is the mean value of the
effects of the spectral peak overlap and self-absorption, sample population 2.
which decreases the usefulness of some peaks. There- The weakness of the Pearson correlation coefficient is
fore, correlation analysis can only be used in identifying that it can only find linear correlations. The basic
the component ratios not requiring the corrections of correlation of the spectral peak to line intensity is linear,
overlap or self-absorption. On the other hand, analyzing but it can be obscured by self-absorption.15 This results
each observed peak for overlap and self-absorption in decreased correlation coefficients compared to Spear-
would require a vast amount of effort since the spectrum man’s rank correlation coefficients, which also considers
has over 200 peaks.
non-linear correlations. On the other hand, the prelim-
inary calculation of the Spearman correlations showed
that the lines with the high correlations to the XRF data
did not show signs of self-absorption.
Correlation Significance. Significance of correlations
can be tested with the false discovery rate method. This
method is less conservative in choosing the significant
correlations than the classical family-wise error rate
methods.16 This is especially useful when the number of
correlation tests is as large as in this study.
The tested null hypothesis was the appearance of
correlation between the samples when there is no
correlation between the populations. Variance of corre-
lation has been found to agree with t-distribution when
FIG. 3. Example of fitting the thermal radiation photon flux curve to the there is no correlation between the populations. In this
emission spectrum. case, the t value for a single correlation coefficient can

28 Volume 68, Number 1, 2014


TABLE II. Amount of peaks and peak ratios used in the correlation
analysis along with the amount of resulting correlations.

Measurement arc current

50 A 75 A 100 A

Number of peaks 218 256 238


Number of peak ratios 46 656 65 536 56 644
Calculated correlations 2 600 640 3 655 680 3 158 736

be calculated using the equation:


pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi FIG. 4. Peak ratio giving the highest correlation coefficient to FeOx/
r12 n  2 MnO.
t¼ ð3Þ
1  r212

where r12 is the tested correlation coefficient, and n is the RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
sample size.17 The significance of the correlations can Various peak amounts were observed with different
then be evaluated by calculating the P values and testing arc currents. The number of peaks also varied from
if they satisfy the criterion proposed by Benjamini and sample to sample. Only the spectral peaks, which were
Hochberg16: found in all but one sample, were selected for the
i  correlation analysis. Table II shows the amount of peak
PðiÞ  q ð4Þ ratios used in the correlation analysis and the amount of
m
correlations between the peak ratios and the composi-
where P(i) is the P value corresponding to the order tion ratios. The amount of peaks for the 100 A current
number i, i is the order number, m is the number of the was slightly reduced due to saturation.
correlations, and q* is the decided confidence level. The criterion presented in Eq. 4 was used to find the
Correlations of Slag Compositions. The calculation limits of correlation significance. The null hypothesis
of correlation coefficients is based on the assumption was rejected for the correlations passing the criterion,
that the tested species are independent. This is not true and the correlations were deemed significant. The
in compositional data because every component is rejection region for 50 A measurements was over
related through the sum of compositions being 1. 0.703, for 75 A over 0.690, and for 100 A over 0.626 with
Components can also have correlations caused by the the confidence level of 0.95.
EAF processing practice and the chemical reactions in The best reference component for each analyzed
the EAF. These relations were tested by calculating the component would be the component ratio giving the
correlation matrix of the slag compositions. The signif- highest correlations between the spectral peak ratios
icant correlations found with Bonferroni correction were and the component ratios. Simply relying on the
between the slag components CrOx and MnO and also correlation coefficients for finding the best reference
between SiO2 and Al2O3. The apparent high correlation was found to be insufficient, which can be seen from Fig.
between SiO2 and Al2O3 can be explained by the 4 showing the peak ratio having a correlation of 0.98 with
difference in their content in the slags of different the composition ratio of FeOx/MnO. The correlation is
production lines, which can be observed in Table I. The clearly enhanced by the lack of data with the high FeOx/
correlation of CrOx and MnO content is plausible since MnO ratio.
the amount of both CrOx and MnO increase in the slag This behavior was observed only for the component
when the reducing agents run out during EAF process- ratios with MnO as a reference. The reason for the high
ing. The high correlation of CrOx and MnO content in the correlation shown in Fig. 4 is the small amount of
slag samples means that the correlation analysis cannot samples with low manganese content. When these two
discriminate between the peaks of CrOx from MnO and data points were removed, the R2 of the linear fit was
comparison to atomic spectra databases is needed. reduced to 0.72. The effect was removed by disregarding

TABLE III. Composition ratios having the highest correlations with observed peak ratios.

50 A measurements 75 A measurements 100 A measurements


Analyzed
component Composition ratio Correlation Composition ratio Correlation Composition ratio Correlation

CrOx CrOx/FeOx 0.916 CrOx/FeOx 0.961 CrOx/FeOx 0.961


FeOx FeOx/MnO 0.945 FeOx/MnO 0.926 FeOx/CrOx 0.955
Al2O3 – – – – – –
MgO MgO/MnO 0.929 MgO/MnO 0.922 – –
CaO CaO/CrOx 0.929 CaO/MnO 0.902 CaO/CrOx 0.970
SiO2 SiO2/MnO 0.947 SiO2/MnO 0.955 SiO2/MnO 0.947
MnO MnO/FeOx 0.957 MnO/SiO2 0.956 MnO/SiO2 0.958
TiO2 TiO2/CrOx 0.942 – – TiO2/MnO 0.917

APPLIED SPECTROSCOPY 29
TABLE IV. NIST wavelengths of the validated atomic emission content of the slag are easiest to observe. Moreover, the
peaks found in the peak ratios having high correlations with the ratios mostly reflect changes in the amount of MnO or
slag component ratios.18
CrOx since other components have smaller percentage
differences between the slag samples. An exception to
Current Species Wavelength (nm)
this behavior is Al2O3, but peak ratios with high
50 A Cr I 363.98 correlations to the slag composition ratios including
397.67 Al2O3 were not observed. The lack of Al2O correlations is
579.10 explained by the low number of suitable atomic emission
50 A Mn I 307.0
314.818 lines. The lines at 394.4 and 396.1 nm were merged to the
323.678 lines of Ca II, and the lines near 309.3 nm were merged
325.614 to the lines of Mg I. Other significant Al I lines have high
326.471 excitation energy, and they did not appear at all in some
353.212
354.780
samples.
367.052 The peak ratios of the highest correlations were
398.524 validated by comparing them to the National Institute of
449.890 Standards and Technology (NIST) database for atomic
50 A Mg I 383.829 emission lines. The validation was performed by
517.268
518.360 checking if the peaks were related to the same slag
75 A Cr I 297.548 components according to both the correlations and the
355.852 NIST database. Table IV shows the NIST validated
363.980 peaks.18 Most matches were found for Mn I and Cr I,
364.900
365.626 and some to Mg I. Also, many of the peaks related to
400.144 MnO according to the correlations actually matched to Cr
416.552 I in the NIST database. This is explained by the
435.963 correlation of MnO and CrOx content of the slag.
452.647
453.572
Many potential peak ratios with high correlations to
488.701 ratios of CrOx and MnO content were observed with all
75 A Mn I 291.460 three arc currents. The ratios CrOx/FeOx, MnO/FeOx, and
304.457 MnO/SiO2 have especially high correlations to the peak
307.027 ratios. Percentage differences in CrOx and MnO content
326.471
329.688 of the slag samples were high, which makes it easier to
353.212 perceive the changes in their peak heights despite the
354.803 arc fluctuations. The feasibility of analyzing MnO ratios
356.949 is supported by the successful analysis of manganese
75 A Mg I 517.268
100 A Cr I 297.111 from steel converter hot spot emission spectra.7
398.391 The rest of the peaks attributed to the components
420.359 MgO, FeOx, CaO, SiO2, and TiO2 did not match their
433.945 NIST-documented peaks. Instead, 11 of these peaks
434.451
451.190
matched NIST documented Mg I peaks and two to Mg II
456.551 peaks with a tolerance below the optical resolution of
457.168 0.525 nm. This indicates that the found peak ratios are
459.139 not reliable in observing changes in the amount of FeOx,
464.617 CaO, SiO2, and TiO2. One possible explanation is that the
492.227
526.415 peaks of Mg I and Mg II describe the arc fluctuations
100 A Mn I 324.852 better than the actual MgO content of the slag. This
371.893 would also explain the lack of high correlations to MgO
417.660 content of the slag. The correlations to other components
425.766
are likely caused by the overlapping of their peaks with
Mg I.
The possible causes for a lack of convincing correla-
the samples with low MnO content in the calculations tions for CaO are broadening and self-absorption. These
with MnO as a reference. effects reduce the calculated correlations. CaO content
The correlations were filtered so that only the of the slag is more than 37%, which makes Ca I and Ca II
maximum correlation coefficient of each peak ratio was lines susceptible to self-absorption. The lines of Ca II at
further analyzed. This negates the effect of correlations 393.36 and 363.84 nm could be observed from the
appearing for the different composition ratios containing measurements, but they were not found among the high
the same integer or denominator as the highest correlations. The absence of the most prominent Si I
correlation. The five highest correlations for each slag peak at 288.16 nm does not support analysis of Si ratios.
component were included in the further analysis. Table Also, distinct peaks of Fe I or Ti I were not observed from
III shows the reference components giving the highest the emission spectra.
correlation for each analyzed component. The accuracy of the validated peak ratios was studied
According to Table III, all ratios include either MnO or by approximating the CrOx/FeOx ratio of the slag from
CrOx. This indicates that changes in MnO and CrOx the observed peak ratios. Figure 5 shows the best linear

30 Volume 68, Number 1, 2014


FIG. 5. Relation between the XRF analyzed CrOx/FeOx ratio and the observed peak ratios with different arc currents: (a) 100 A, (b) 75 A, (c) 50 A.

fit curves to the data points with CrOx/FeOx ratio as y besides MnO/FeOx, CrxOy/FeOx, and MnO/SiO2 would
value and peak ratio as x value. The CrOx/FeOx ratio of require analysis of both self-absorption and broadening,
the sample could be estimated from the linear fit with an and possibly spectrometer configuration with a better
average relative error of 11.0% for 100 A measurements, optic resolution.
11.4% for 75 A measurements, and 14.3% for 50 A The results show that correlation analysis is a useful
measurements. Lower accuracy for 50 A measurements method in providing potential peak ratios for component
is likely caused by the higher effect of voltage fluctua- ratio analysis. Due to dependent parameters like MnO and
tions on the spectrum. CrxOy content in slag, the correlation method cannot be
CrOx/FeOx and MnO/FeOx ratios are especially useful used as a sole tool for peak selection, but requires
in analyzing the process conditions of EAF. The iron comparison with the NIST atomic emission spectrum
oxide content of the slag is relatively constant, so an database to separate the peaks of dependent components.
increase of ratio indicates an increase of CrOx and MnO
in the slag. This in turn indicates chromium oxidation, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
which should be prevented with deoxidant additions. A This research is part of the ‘‘Fluorescence Measurement of EAF’’
relative error of over 10% would be acceptable, project. It is coordinated by the University of Oulu Innovation Centre
and the Laboratory of Process Metallurgy. The Finnish Funding Agency
considering there is currently no information on slag for Technology and Innovation (TEKES) is acknowledged for funding
compositions during the EAF processing. this work. Mr. Juho Kunelius and Dr. Paavo Hooli from Outokumpu
Measuring emission spectra from an industrial EAF Stainless Oy Tornio Works are acknowledged for providing the EAF
will be considerably more difficult than from a laboratory samples and the XRF analysis results. The personnel from the Energy
Efficiency and Lifecycle Efficient Metal Processes (ELEMET) research
furnace. The electric arc is sometimes completely program are acknowledged for their ideas and groundwork for this
obscured by the foaming slag in industrial furnaces. study. Juha Roininen is acknowledged for his support of this study. The
Fortunately, this is less of a problem in stainless steel Electron Spectroscopy Research Group at the University of Oulu is
EAF because of the low foaming tendency of high CrOx acknowledged for loaning the measuring device. Mr. Henri Tikkala and
slag. Also, variation in the melt height will make aiming Paavo Turunen are acknowledged for their support in conducting the
measurements.
the optic fiber difficult.
A completely different challenge is the harsh process
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