What is deoxidation and how can it be useful for energy savings? In fact, can the process really save money and improve the quality of iron?
Sometimes our editors find items that are not exactly “heat treat” but do deal with interesting developments in one of our key markets: aerospace, automotive, medical, energy, or general manufacturing. To celebrate getting to the “fringe” of the weekend, Heat Treat Today presents today’s Heat Treat Fringe Friday article that answers these questions. Hint: Deoxidation is helpful, and the article points to how annealing heat treatment may not be necessary in order to meet the ferritic ductile iron elongation specification levels.
An excerpt:
Ductile iron producers typically add copper to the melt to enhance the material’s tensile strength. That becomes unnecessary when base iron is deoxidized prior to magnesium conversion treatment. The deoxidized iron’s strength rises to near 100,000 psi after deoxidation, without copper addition. Deoxidation removes the suspended MgO oxide particles that reduce strength and elongation in ductile iron.
Read more: “Deoxidation Saves Alloying Cost and Improves Iron Castability”
