The critical heat flux surveys of thirteen Chinese blast furnaces were carried out. The mathematical model of hearth bottom was established and the temperature field was simulated by utilizing the method of inverse problem based on the collected parameters and temperature data. The critical heat flux and dangerous critical heat flux of hearth were defined and analyzed as well as the initial and investigative critical heat flux of hearth, and the influences of thermal conductivity and residual thickness of carbon bricks on critical heat flux were discussed. The relationships between critical heat flux of stave and hearth bricks were also compared. It is found that the dangerous critical heat flux of these blast furnaces ranged from 9.38 to 57 kW/mz. Therefore, there was no uniform critical heat flux of hearth due to the structure design, refractory materials selection, construction quality of hearth and other factors. The heat flux should be lower than the critical heat flux with corresponding thickness of carbon bricks to control the erosion of hearth. The critical heat flux of stave would be much lower than that of hearth bricks with the air gap. However, the critical heat flux of stave should be higher than that of hearth bricks when gas existed between furnace shell and staves.
Steel plate cold common （SPCC） is a Al-killed steel with Ca-treatment. The control of Al2O3 inclusion into low melting point liquid region is beneficial for inclusion removal, cast-ability promotion and defects reduction during rolling. Thus it is essential to understand steel-inclusion equilibrium since inclusion composition is determined by composition of liquid steel directly through steel-inclusion reaction. Thermodynamic calculation software FactSage is performed to understand how to control inclusion composition during ladle furnace （LF） refining, and industrial trials are carried out to verify calculated results. Firstly, target region for controlling CaO-Al2O3-MgO ternary inclusion is analyzed on the basis of the ternary phase diagram and the relationship between activities related to pure solid and activities related to pure liquid was fixed by thermodynamic analysis in order to obtain reliable activities for components of inclusions in the target region by FactSage. In addition, inclusions in steel samples are detected by scanning electron microscopy （SEM） combined with energy dispersive spectroscopy （EDS）. It is found that most of Al2O3 inclusions are modified into lower melting point region but a number of them are still located in high melting point region at the end of LF refining after Ca-treatment. Moreover, the composition of liquid steel equilibrating with liquid CaO-Al2O3-MgO inclusion is obtained by steel-inclusion equilibrium calculation when w[Al]s is approximating 0.03% as： a[O] is 1.0×10-6 to 4.0×10-6, w[Ca] is 20×10-6 to 50×10-6 and w[Mg] is 0.1×10-6 to 3.0×10-6. At last, stability diagrams of various calcium aluminates and CaS are established and they show that liquid calcium aluminate inclusions form when w[Ca] is more than 20×10-6, but CaS precipitation is difficult to prevent because sufficiently low w[S] （〈0.003%） is required.
