What's the role of carbon additive

The Role of carbon additive

Used in casting, specifically cast iron and cast steel, castings often have carbon content requirements. Carbon additive, as the name suggests, increase the carbon content in molten iron. For example, in smelting, common furnace charges include pig iron, scrap steel, and recycled materials. Pig iron has a high carbon content, but its purchase price is relatively higher than scrap steel. Therefore, increasing the amount of scrap steel and decreasing the amount of pig iron, along with adding carbon additive, can help reduce casting costs.

Carbon additive not only compensate for carbon loss during steelmaking, ensuring the required carbon content for specific steel grades, but can also be used for post-furnace adjustments. As a crucial raw material for melting molten iron in induction furnaces, the quality and usage of carbon additive directly affect the state of the molten iron.

Adding specific grades of carbon additive to the ladle after slag removal and degassing treatment can adjust the carbon content, achieving multiple grades in one ladle. Materials used in carbon additive mainly include graphite, graphite-like materials, electrode blocks, coke, and silicon carbide. Commonly used electrode blocks and silicon carbide recarburizers have the advantages of high carbon content and strong oxidation resistance, but the production process is relatively complex and the cost is high. Using coke powder and graphite as recarburizing materials has a lower production cost than materials such as electrode blocks, but the ash and sulfur content is high and the carbon content is low, resulting in poor recarburizing effect.

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