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Quenched Cupola Esperiment to Understand Silicon Carbide Behavior (04-05#06) |
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Coordinator
S. Katz Associates Inc. The cupola furnace produces about 66% of the iron used for castings. Its simple construction belies the complex chemical and physical processes that are carried out within. To improve operational efficiency and reduce melt losses, a program to develop a computer simulation of the cupola was established in 1989 under the auspices of the DOE, AFS and U.S. foundries. The goal was to integrate the effects of the numerous input variables so as to accurately predict cupola behavior, which in turn would enable improvements in cupola performance. Although efforts have been made to commercialize the model, at present a single obstacle to it success remains; the inability to model the behavior of silicon carbide (SiC). Since this is key charge component of a majority of cupolas as an alloy addition, it is vital to understand how it reacts in the cupola. The most direct way to obtain the needed information is to quench a cupola and carefully analyze the cupola’s contents. Cupolas and blast furnaces have been quenched in the past by shutting off the air blast and introducing water at the charge door to cool the contents of the cupola and then examining the contents of quenched furnaces using archeological techniques. A chemical analysis is then performed on each layer of the quenched burden. This project focuses on various forms of SiC addition. Besides reporting the results at the AFS Metalcasting Congress and the 2008 Melting Methods specialty conference, the results will be used to improve the AFS Cupola Modeling Software.
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