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.