VOD

(Vacuum oxygen decarburization)

What is VOD?

 The vacuum oxygen decarburizer (VOD), has an oxygen lance in

the centre of the tank lid to enhance carbon removal under
vacuum. The VOD is often used to lower the carbon content of
high-alloy steels without also overoxidizing such oxidizable
alloying elements as chromium.
 This process is charecterized by:slag-free tapping at the
melting furnace, application of ladles with sufficient
freeboard, inert gas stirring through the ladle’s bottom by
means of porous plugs, oxygen lance with high efficiency and
minimised splashing.
 Here the vital player is the vacuum treatment which reduces
carbon without reducing the alloying elements to a greater
extent.
Why vacuum treatment needed?
 Vacuum treatment of molten steel decreases the partial pressure of
CO, bubbles of CO are formed in liquid state , float up and then they
are removed. At this pressure oxidation of chromium is not feasible.
Hence low carbon high alloy status is maintained.
 It also helps in removing hydrogen dissolved in liquid steel. Gaseous
nitrogen and nitrogen inclusions are also removed.
 Movement of molten steel caused by CO bubble also helps in refining
steel from non-metallic inclusions.
 Steels refined in vacuum are characterized by homogenous structure ,
low-content of non-metallic inclusion and low gas porosity.
VOD design contd.
 The VOD system essentially consists of a vacuum tank,a
ladle furnace with or without argon stirring , a lid with
oxygen lancing facility.
 The ladle has a free board of about a metre to contain
violent agitation of the bath during lancing. The charge is
molten metal from arc furnace. The percentage of carbon
in molten metal in VOD process is about 0.7%-0.8%.
 Argon stirring is required to faster the kinetics.
VOD design contd.
 At the end of refining , The vacuum is broken and the bath
is deoxidized with Al and Fe-Si.
 Desulphurization can be carried out by putting synthetic
slag .
 Argon purging would also result in sulphur removal around
80%.
 Since many of the stainless steels are required to be
vacuum treated to decrease the gas content , the vacuum
system could easily be modified to incorporate oxygen
lancing facility and there by VOD can be brought about for
producing low carbon steels , without much extra
investment.
Final Composition and benefits

 THE total VOD cycle lasts for 2 -2.5 hours.

 Final sulphur content-0.01% & carbon content-0.02%
 Final chromium content-15-18%(recovery ~97%)
 Deep carbon removal
 Low loses of chromium in treatment of stainless steel
 Sulphur removal
 Precise alloying
 Temperature and chemical uniformity.
 Non-metallic inclusions removal
 VAD
(Vacuum arc degassing)
 Schematic illustration of the use of
separate ladle covers for reheating and
degassing of 68 tonne heats at Atlas
Specialty Steels.
Schematic illustration of a VAD unit
VAD process
 This is a single station unit in which the ladle sits in a vacuum tank and is
stirred by inert gas through porous plug at the bottom with provision for
heating through electrodes and alloying additions.
  After addition of lime in the molten steel ladle, arcing is carried out at 250
Torr – 300 Torr to raise the temperature & fuse the lime followed by short
duration degassing, additions for chemistry adjustment and deep degassing to
pressures as low as 1 Torr.
  Argon stirring is continued in all the operational steps and the adjustment of
flow rate is done for varied operations carried out during processing. The
heating rate is about 3ºC – 4 ºC/min and during heating, argon flow rate is
kept on the lower side.
VAD process cont.

 In this system, under vacuum, carbon-oxygen reaction and carbon-Al2O3

reaction under the high temperature arc are of great help in achieving low
oxygen content without any solid reaction product.
 Hydrogen levels as low as 1.5 ppm are achieved caused by intense mass
transfer by argon and low partial pressure of hydrogen because of dilution of
liberated carbon monoxide. 
 The greatest advantage of this process is the high degree of de-sulphurisation
as high as 80% for production of steels with sulphur levels as low as 0.005%.
VAD is now a widely used method of producing clean steels in the world.