Transition of Blast Furnace Slag from Silicates-Based to Aluminates-Based: Viscosity

Abstract

The effect of Al2O3 and the Al2O3/SiO2(A/S) ratio on the viscosity of the CaO-SiO2-Al2O3-MgO-TiO2 slag system was studied in the present work. At a fixed CaO/SiO2(C/S) ratio of 1.20, 9 mass pct MgO, and 1 mass pct TiO2, the viscosity increases with an increase in Al2O3 content at a range of 16 to 24 mass pct due to the polymerization of the aluminosilicate structures, while it decreases when the Al2O3 is higher than 24 mass pct, which means that Al2O3 acts as a network modifier at higher content. Increasing A/S from 0.47 to 0.92 causes a slight decrease in viscosity of the slags and has an opposite effect when A/S is more than 0.92. The free running temperature increases with the Al2O3 content and appears to show a peak at an A/S ratio of 0.92. The change of the apparent activation energy is in accordance with the change of viscosity. When Al2O3 content is more than 24 mass pct with low SiO2, CaO content ranges from 35 to 45 mass pct, and the slag transform from silicates-based to aluminates-based can still get a good operation region. Four different viscosity models were employed to predict the viscosity and RIBOUD’s model was found to be the best in predicting the viscosity by comparing the estimated viscosity with the measured viscosity.