DEVELOPMENT OF AN AQUEOUS PARTICLE SENSOR (APS III) SYSTEM AS A RESEARCH TOOL FOR STUDYING THE BEHAVIOUR OF INCLUSIONS IN WATER MODELS OF TUNDISH OPERATIONS

摘要

The control of liquid metal cleanliness during refining operations is an effective procedure used to improve the material properties of the final product. Over the years, low temperature simulation studies on inclusion behavior in steelmaking tundish operations have been modeled in order to help develop techniques to float out as many inclusions as possible, in liquid steel systems, prior to casting. The inclusions in liquid steel are simulated by glass microspheres submerged in water, and their behavior was studied with a new Aqueous Particle Sensor (APS), recently re-constructed at McGill, this time using digital based micro-computing technology. The working principle of the APS is similar to the well known Liquid Metal Cleanliness Analyzer (LiMCA), used worldwide for the detection of inclusions in molten aluminum and steel. Both are based on the Resistive Pulse, or Electric Sensing Zone (ESZ) approach. The latest "water LiMCA", or APS III system, relies on the processing speed of current microprocessors. This allows us to simplify the acquisition and interpretation of data input. The APS III has a wide particle size measurement capability, ranging between 25 and 170 microns, gathering data, online, or off-line, with high accuracy.