New trends in basic oxygen furnace dephosphorization

Except for special grades of steel where it is used as an alloying element, phosphorus is regarded as an impurity that must be removed. Considering the conventional integrated iron and steelmaking, there are primarily two processes for phosphorus removal. The first is a hot metal dephosphorization (DeP) process that is applied to a blast furnace for hot metal before the steelmaking process. The second is the basic oxygen furnace steelmaking (BOS), a unique method primarily used for steelmaking, with the exception of stainless steels. Hot metal phosphorus content has a direct impact on BOS. An increase of phosphorus in hot metal is mainly related to the use of high P2O5 containing iron ores. In the current literature review, new trends of phosphorus removal in converter steelmaking are outlined. The double-slag practice was reported to be successful when hot metal P content was larger than 0.100%. It was indicated that the tapping temperature was critical for the production of low-phosphorus grades for which maximum allowable P content was 0.007% and that high tapping temperatures should be avoided. The tap-to-tap time for the double-slag process was slightly longer than the conventional converter steelmaking. It was further reported that the double-slag practice would be more economical than an establishment of a separate hot metal dephosphorization unit, if low-phosphorus grades did not have a significant share in the product mix of a steelmaking company. Endpoint phosphorus prediction was one of the important recent trends of converter steelmaking. A mixed injection of CO2-O2 to a basic oxygen furnace was applied to enhance dephosphorization, and promising results were reported. Unfortunately, a successful process for recycling of BOS dephosphorization slag has not been reported yet.