Investigation of the kinetic mechanism of the demanganization reaction between carbon-saturated liquid iron and CaF2-CaO-SiO2-based slags

The demanganization reaction kinetics of carbon-saturated liquid iron with an eight-component slag consisting of CaO-SiO₂-MgO-FeO-MnO-Al₂O₃-TiO₂-CaF₂ was investigated at 1553, 1623, and 1673 K in this study. The rate-controlling step (RCS) for the demanganization reaction with regard to the hot metal pretreatment conditions was studied via kinetics analysis based on the fundamental equation of heterogeneous reaction kinetics. From the temperature dependence of the mass transfer coefficient of a transition-metal oxide (MnO), the apparent activation energy of the demanganization reaction was estimated to be 189.46 kJ·mol-1 in the current study, which indicated that the mass transfer of MnO in the molten slag controlled the overall rate of the demanganization reaction. The calculated apparent activation energy was slightly lower than the values reported in the literature for mass transfer in a slag phase. This difference was attributed to an increase in the "specific reaction interface" (SRI) value, either as a result of turbulence at the reaction interface or a decrease of the absolute amount of slag phase during sampling, and to the addition of calcium fluoride to the slag.