Mäkinen A, Niskanen J, Tikkala H, Aksela H
Department of Physics, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland.
Rev Sci Instrum. 2013 Apr;84(4):043111. doi: 10.1063/1.4802833.
Optical emission spectroscopy has been for long proposed for monitoring and studying industrial steel making processes. Whereas the radiative decay of thermal excitations is always taking place in high temperatures needed in steel production, one of the most promising environment for such studies are electric arc furnaces, creating plasma in excited electronic states that relax with intense characteristic emission in the optical regime. Unfortunately, large industrial scale electric arc furnaces also present a challenging environment for optical emission studies and application of the method is not straightforward. To study the usability of optical emission spectroscopy in real electric arc furnaces, we have developed a laboratory scale DC electric arc furnace presented in this paper. With the setup, optical emission spectra of Fe, Cr, Cr2O3, Ni, SiO2, Al2O3, CaO, and MgO were recorded in the wavelength range 250-600 nm and the results were analyzed with the help of reference data. The work demonstrates that using characteristic optical emission, obtaining in situ chemical information from oscillating plasma of electric arc furnaces is indeed possible. In spite of complications, the method could possibly be applied to industrial scale steel making process in order to improve its efficiency.
长期以来，人们一直提议使用光发射光谱法来监测和研究工业炼钢过程。鉴于热激发的辐射衰减总是发生在钢铁生产所需的高温环境中，电弧炉是进行此类研究最有前景的环境之一，电弧炉能产生处于激发电子态的等离子体，这些等离子体通过光学区域内强烈的特征发射而弛豫。不幸的是，大型工业规模的电弧炉对于光发射研究而言也是一个具有挑战性的环境，该方法的应用并不简单。为了研究光发射光谱法在实际电弧炉中的可用性，我们开发了本文介绍的实验室规模的直流电弧炉。利用该装置，在250 - 600 nm波长范围内记录了Fe、Cr、Cr₂O₃、Ni、SiO₂、Al₂O₃、CaO和MgO的光发射光谱，并借助参考数据对结果进行了分析。这项工作表明，利用特征光发射，从电弧炉振荡等离子体中获取原位化学信息确实是可行的。尽管存在诸多复杂因素，但该方法有可能应用于工业规模的炼钢过程，以提高其效率。
