Elimination of Zinc from Aluminum During Remelting in an Vacuum Induction Furnace

Abstract

In this paper, the results of the study on aluminium evaporation from the Al-Zn alloys (4.2% weight) during remelting in a vacuum induction furnace (VIM) are presented. The evaporation of components of liquid metal alloys is complex due to its heterogeneous nature. Apart from chemical affinity, its speed is determined by the phenomena of mass transport, both in the liquid and gas phase. The experiments were performed at 10-1000 Pa for 953 K - 1103 K. A significant degree of zinc loss has been demonstrated during the analysed process. The relative values of zinc loss ranged from 4 to 92%. Lowering the pressure in the melting system from 1000 Pa to 10 Pa caused an increase in the value of density of the zinc evaporating stream from 3.82⋅10-5 to 0.000564 g⋅cm-2⋅s-1 at 953 K and 3.32⋅10-5 to 0.000421 g⋅cm-2⋅s-1 for 1103 K. Based on the results of the conducted experiments. it was found that evaporation of zinc was largely controlled by mass transfer in the gas phase and only for pressure 10 Pa this process was controlled by combination of both liquid and gas phase mass transfer.

Keywords

• mass transfer coefficient
• zinc evaporation
• vacuum induction furnace
• meniscus