A Kinetic Study of the Effect of Basicity on the Mold Fluxes Crystallization

The effect of basicity on the mold fluxes crystallization was investigated in this article. The time-temperature-transformation (TTT) diagrams and continuous-cooling-transformation (CCT) diagrams of mold fluxes with different basicity were constructed by using single, hot thermocouple technology (SHTT). The results showed that with the increase of basicity, the incubation time of isothermal crystallization became shorter, the crystallization temperature was getting higher, and the critical cooling rate of continuous cooling crystallization became faster. The X-ray diffraction analysis suggested that calcium silicate (CaO center dot SiO2) was precipitated at the upper part of the TTT diagram and cuspidine (Ca4Si2O7F2) was formed at the lower part, when the basicity of mold fluxes was within 1.0 to 1.2. However, when basicity was 0.8, only the cuspidine phase was formed. A kinetic study of isothermal crystallization process indicated that the increase of the basicity tended to enhance the mold flux crystallization, and the crystallization activation energy became smaller. The crystallization mechanism of cupsidine was changing from one-dimensional growth to three-dimensional growth with a constant number of nuclei, when the basicity of mold fluxes varied from 0.8 to 1.2.