of !his, H rejected by solid steel accumulates in blowholes and pinholes.

The gas pressure developed

i.nside !he Iauer tends to be high. During forging, !he combination of hot working stresses and high
gas p r e - ~ s u r e in pinholes near !he surface tends to cause fine cracks in the surface region. Efforts
to avoid lhese cracks led to commereial development of vacuum degassing processes.
Hydrogen also causes a loss of ductility of steel. Hence, low H is a necessity for superior grades
of steel wilh high strenglh and impact resistance. These considerations have led to hydrogen
consciousness in roUed products as well for several grades of steel.
The need to control the oxygen content of steel melt and deoxidation has been discussed in
Chapter 5. The use of deoxidizers leads to the formation of deoxidation products affecting the
cleanliness of steel. Vacuum treatment of liquid steel promotes a carbon-oxygen reaction and
removal of oxygen as CO. This is clean deoxidation. Recognizing this, steelmakers also made
deoxidation a target of vacuum treatment. This simultaneously lowers carbon as well and constitutes
the basis for vacuum decarburization.
Nitrogen affects toughness and aging characteristics of steel as well as enhancing the tendency
toward stress corrosion cracking. Nitrogen is by and large considered to be harmful for properties
of steel. Its sttain hardening effec-t does not allow extensive cold working without i.ntermiuent
annealing. Low nitrogen is essential for deep drawing quality steel. Very low nitrogen levels have
become extremely important for ultra-low carbon, cold roUed steels with high formability for the
automotive industry. subjected to continuous annealing.
However, it is worth mentioning that there are applications where nitrogen has beneficial effects
on the properties of steel.' The grain refinement action of fine precipitates of aluminum nitride
(AIN), and consequent beneficial effects on properties, have been k.nown for a long time. Solid
solution hardening and precipitation strenglhening effects are utilized in high-strength steels. Nitro-
gen additions are also particularly beneficial for stabiliry and pitti.ng resistance of austenitic stainless
steel grades. Precipitates of nitrides or carbonitrides of several alloying elements, such as aluminum,
boron, chromium. niobium, etc., have been reported.
2
Hydrogen is picked up by the steel melt during primary steelmaking from moisture and water
associated with raw materials and atmosphere. Nitrogen, of course, is picked up from the air.
Steelmakers endeavor to lower the extent of such pickup as weU as to Ousb out these gases from
the melt using various strategies. All of this is beyond the scope of discussion here, since we are
concerned with second steelmakin . However. in this connection, it rna be mentioned that
. -
nitrogen is to be largely conttolled in lbe primary steelmaking and lapping stage. In Chapter 8,
there is a discussion of !his topic in connection with gas absorption from the atmosphere during
tapping and teeming.
As discussed in Section 5.1, total oxygen in steel is determined by inert gas fusion apparatus.
A similar method is employed for determining the nitrogen and hydrogen content of steel. The
sample is melted in graphite crucible under a flow of pure argon. N and H evolve as N
2
and H
2
in
lbe gas srream, whose total quantity is determined specttoscopically. More recently, emission
specttometers have come on the market and are in wide use for lbe analysis of nitrogen and other
alloying elements, as for oxygen in steel.
Peerless and Clay' have reported development of the "Nitris" system by Heraus Electro-Nile.
It has been derived directly from !he Hydris technique for lbe determination of hydrogen in liquid
steel. ll employs a disposable immersion lance. Through some pumping arrangement, the gas in
eqwlibrium with !he melt is collected. The partial pressures of N, or H, directly give values of the
nittogen or hydrogen contents of molten steel. This method does not require !he collection of solid
sample and handling of lbe same for subsequent analysis, and hence it is more rapid.
6.1.1 VACUUM DEGASSING PROCESSES
Review articles and monographs have been published on general Vacuum degassing
processes are traditionally classified into the following categories:
Degassing and Decarburization of Liquid Steel
I. ladle degassing processes
2. srream degassing processes
149
1. ladle degassing processes
2. stream degassing processes
3. circulation gegassing processes (DH and RH)
As stated in Chapter I, an additional temperature drop of 20 to 40c occurs during secondary
processing of liquid steel. Temperature control is very important for proper casting, especially
continuous casting. Therefore, provisions for heating and temperature adjustment during secondary
steelmaking are very desirable. Tn vacuum processing, a successful commercial development in the
decade of the 1960s was vacuum arc degassing (VAD), where arc heating is undertaken. Provision
for healing is provided in an RH degasser as well.
Stainless steels contain a high percentage of chromium. A cheap source of Cr is high-carbon
ferrochrome. However, its addition raises the carbon content of the melt to about I%, which is to
be lowered to less than 0.03% in subsequent processing. Oxygen lancing bas already been found
to promote C-0 reaction in preference to Cr-0 reaction, and it has been practiced commercially.
The use of a vacuum is of further help and led to the development of vacuum-oxygen decarburization
(VOD) process for stainless steels in the decade of tbe 1960s. Some oxygen blowing is nowadays
resorted to in vacuum degassers for the production of ultra-low carbon steels as well. The RH-OB
process is an example.
Tn vacuum degassing, the total pressure in the chamber is lowered, whereas, in degassing by
argon purging, the total pressure above the melt is essentially atmospheric. Even then, degassin'g
is effected. This is because partial pressures of H
2
, N
2
, and CO are essentially zero in the incoming
argon gas. Therefore, degassing by bubbling argon through the melt without vacuum is possible in
principle. But consumption and cost of argon would be high, and the processing time would be
lengthy. Hence, it is not practiced for ordinary steels. However, decarburization of stainless steel
melts by the orson-oxysen decarburittJtiOII {AOD) process is still popular.
Besides degassing, modem vacuum degassers are used to carry out various other functions such
as desulfurization, decarburization, heating, alloying, and homogenization, thereby achieving more
cleanliness as well as inclusion modification. Adaptation of vacuum processes to produce ultra-low
carbon steels is an im rtant develo ment direction.