Model Steelmaking

The Process Metallurgy Module is an Add-on Module within Thermo-Calc that makes it easy to set up calculations for steel and slag. The Module also includes a kinetic model that allows the simulation of the evolution of the steel and slag composition and also the inclusion amount and composition as a function of time based on the actual steelmaking process, including alloy or slag additions, blowing of gases into the steel, heating by electric arc, and so on.

The Module is primarily designed for application to steelmaking and steel refining processes including converters, such as basic oxygen furnaces, electric arc furnaces, ladle furnace metallurgy, and more. The Module can also be applied to other metallurgical processes.

If you work in steel processing or other metallurgical industries, the Process Metallurgy Module can help you better understand your steelmaking and steel refining process. You can gain insights into production processes that are not available with measurements, optimize your current process parameters, or design new steel making recipes if you are planning to expand your product portfolio to include new steel grades.

The Process Metallurgy Module makes it easy to define the composition of a steel and slag system because the calculator automatically provides the three common material groups—steel, slag, and gas— and provides default composition input types that are relevant to each material group.

You can save your material compositions right from the calculator and quickly access them in the future. For example, you might want to predefine compositions of steels, ferro-alloys, slags, and slag additions. The overall composition of the steel and slag is then obtained by simply adding amounts of these predefined materials.

All functionality in the Process Metallurgy Module is also available in TC-Python and TC-Toolbox for MATLAB^®. This makes it possible to easily run high-throughput calculations varying parameters such as composition or temperature. It is possible to set up very complicated process simulations that are hard to configure in the Graphical User Interface. Additionally, one can provide plant data directly from a data warehouse to drive process simulations and other types of calculations*.

* The actual integration needs to be programmed by the customer using either Python or MATLAB^®

TC-Python  |  TC-Toolbox for MATLAB^®

We have developed several in-depth application examples demonstrating how the Process Metallurgy Module can be used to investigate various steps in the steelmaking process, including steel deoxidation on tapping, desulphurization, refining in a ladle furnace, and more. Each example includes a detailed write-up describing why you would make the calculation, how to set it up in Thermo-Calc, and interpretation of the results.

Read the Application Examples