Abstract
One of the main objectives in the steel production process is to obtain a blast furnace pig iron of good quality and at the lowest possible cost. In general, the quality of pig iron is evaluated on the basis of its chemical composition determined by X-ray fluorescence laboratory equipment. In the present study, the performance of a handheld (h) laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) instrument in the identification and the quantification of the relevant elements C, Mn, P, Si, and Ti in forty-six blast furnace pig iron samples was tested successfully. The application of two different models, i.e., univariate and multivariate partial least square (PLS) calibration and validation, to the whole LIBS data set showed that the latter approach was much more efficient than the former one in quantifying all elements considered, especially Si and Ti.
Highlights
The main metallic materials and intermediate products involved in iron and steel industry include pig iron, cast iron, carbon steel, stainless steel, and tool steel, all of which require continuous, accurate, and precise analyses to keep the entire production process under control
Wavelength-dispersive X-ray fluorescence (WDXRF) spectrometry is a well-established analytical technique in iron and steel industry and is routinely used to analyse raw materials, sinters, slags, and the elemental composition of cast iron and steels when coupled with optical emission spectrometry (OES) [2]
Tests performed on steel samples used for instrument internal calibration achieved an accuracy comparable with results of artificial neural networks (ANNs) treatments, the latter ones yielded much more accurate results when unknown samples were tested
Summary
The main metallic materials and intermediate products involved in iron and steel industry include pig iron, cast iron, carbon steel, stainless steel, and tool steel, all of which require continuous, accurate, and precise analyses to keep the entire production process under control. Wavelength-dispersive X-ray fluorescence (WDXRF) spectrometry is a well-established analytical technique in iron and steel industry and is routinely used to analyse raw materials, sinters, slags, and the elemental composition of cast iron and steels when coupled with optical emission spectrometry (OES) [2]. This technique can achieve great accuracy and precision, the instrumentation is not portable and is quite expensive. The predictive capability of each calibration model was evaluated by calculating the Pearson’s correlation coefficient (R), root mean square error (RMSE), and mean absolute prediction error (MAPE) and LODs, whereas the leave one out cross validation (LOO-CV) method was used to perform external validation
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