Preparation of 10 kg Ingot of Ultra-Pure Iron

Abstract

A new induction melting furnace with a cold-copper crucible has been designed and constructed using ultra-high vacuum technology. The main chamber can be evacuated to 6.7 × 10—8 Pa as the base pressure. The furnace can melt high-purity iron of 10 kg, at most, within 300 s. The total pressure becomes less than 4 × 10—6 Pa during melting of iron under the best condition. As starting materials for melting, high-purity electrolytic iron containing impurities of 25.2 massppm which is determined after the analysis of 18 elements was prepared. The content of gaseous impurities such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur and hydrogen is 19.6 massppm in total. It is concluded that ultra-high vacuum melting of iron is quite useful to increase the purity of iron. The total content of impurities in iron is reduced from 25.2 to 12.6 massppm by melting under the atmosphere of 7.5 × 10—6 Pa. The amount of gaseous impurities can be reduced from 19.6 to 10.1 massppm in total. Especially, the amount of oxygen is reduced from 14.1 to 7.5 massppm. These amounts of gaseous impurities are almost the limit of detection by conventional methods of analysis.