Ferrosilicon is often used as a deoxidizer or an alloying agent, and plays a very important role in steelmaking or casting. As a deoxidizer, ferrosilicon plays an important role in the forging of steel is very beneficial. In addition, taking advantage of the characteristic that ferrosilicon powder can release a lot of heat when it is burned at high temperature, it is often used as a heating agent for steel ingot caps to improve the quality and recovery rate of steel ingots.
In the cast iron industry, inoculants and nodularizers have been used, and ferrosilicon has played a very important role in it. In the process of casting iron, some ferrosilicon can be directly added, which can prevent the formation of carbides in the iron, and promote the precipitation and spheroidization of graphite. Therefore, in the production of ductile iron, ferrosilicon is an important inoculant (helps to precipitate graphite) and nodulizers.
It can be seen from this that the role of ferrosilicon is very extensive, no matter which production it is in, it will have the effect of reducing production costs.
Ferrosilicon smelting generally adopts submerged arc furnaces and is produced by continuous operation.
The so-called continuous operation method means that after the charge is subjected to high temperature, it reacts and melts continuously, so that the charge level drops accordingly; at the same time, new charge is continuously added to keep the charge in the furnace full. It is released periodically according to the amount of alloy smelted and accumulated in the furnace. During the whole smelting process, the electrode is inserted deep into the furnace material and does not expose the arc, so the heat loss is small and the furnace temperature is high.
Due to these characteristics of ferrosilicon smelting, the whole smelting process is not divided into stages. This method is called continuous operation method.
In addition, ferrosilicon is also smelted in blast furnaces. However, because of the low furnace temperature, the silicon content of the product is about 10-20%, and now the blast furnace method is generally not used to smelt ferrosilicon.