Abstract

The production of clean steels is becoming more common and this demands the use of special refractories in order to avoid contamination of the steel. Usually, for the lining of the ladles it is very common to use fired bricks as the carbon pick-up can jeopardize the steel quality. However, magnesia carbon bricks with very low carbon content can be an alternative to the fired brick.

This paper shows the results of steelplant customer trials using this type of product in the production of low carbon special and stainless steels. The advantage of using this type of brick is a lower wear rate, lower cost and they don’t show structural spalling at the same frequency as the fired bricks. A further advantage of the ULC brick is the lower thermal conductivity, which reduces the heat losses and the steel shell temperature.

In addition this paper compares the properties of resin and pitch bonded ULC content bricks illustrating the different characteristics imparted by using these different binder systems and the effect these have on product performance.