A Proposal for a Novel Method to Measure the Diffusivity of Species in Slag

Abstract

The rate of reactions involved in steel-refining operations largely depend on the transport of species through the slag or metal phase at steel refining temperatures; the intrinsic reaction rates are expected to be high. Therefore, the study of diffusivity of species in slag is of great importance. The present work proposes a new methodology, in which experiments can be designed to determine the diffusivity of species in liquid slag. In this article, a mathematical description for the methodology is formulated and subsequently solved using numerical methods. This exercise will help in identifying appropriate bounds for experimental parameters for a desired accuracy. The proposed methodology is generic for any species in the liquid slag phase. However, diffusion of sulfur through slag has been illustrated as a case study. The order of magnitude for the diffusion coefficient for sulfur was taken from the classic works of Saito and Kawai, the sulfide capacity and sulfur partition ratio were retrieved from the works of Taniguchi et al., and the slag density was retrieved from earlier experimental results of the present authors. The slag density was obtained from earlier experimental results from the present group. The Henrian activity coefficients were retrieved from literature. Subsequent to the present work, the design of experiments and measurements carried out using the proposed methodology and the results obtained are presented as the second article on this subject.