Experimental Study on the Production of Nitrogen-bearing Stainless Steel by Injecting Nitrogen Gas

"Instead of nickel-based stainless steel, a nitrogen-bearing stainless steel was produced to reduce the production cost stemming from the shortage of nickel recourses. Thermodynamic model to calculate the saturation nitrogen content in the stainless steel were developed and the model was validated by experimental measurement. The experiments were performed with a high temperature induction furnace. Nitrogen gas under constant pressure was injected into the crucible with a top lance by which the nitrogen was transferred to the molten stainless steel. The effects of chemical composition, temperature, superficial active elements and nitrogen-flow rate on transferring nitrogen to the steel were investigated and discussed.IntroductionWith the rapid production growth of stainless steels, nitrogen-bearing stainless steel has recently attracted more and more attention for their high strength and excellent corrosion resistance imparted by interstitial nitrogen without decreasing its toughness and ductility. Moreover, the addition of nitrogen to the stainless steel as a substitute for nickel leads a lower consumption of nickel, so significantly lowers the high production cost stemming from the shortage of nickel recourses. However, production of the nitrogen-bearing steel is difficult since nitrogen is a gas element and has a low solubility in the steel. So efficiently increasing the amount of nitrogen in steel continues to be one of the main concerns for the production of nitrogen-bearing steels.Currently there are some special processes to produce austenitic stainless steels with a very high N content, including pressurized electroslag remelting, counter-pressure casting, special induction melting and powder metallurgy, etc [1]. Special expensive vacuum system was required for these processes. Alloying nitrogen at a normal pressure can be performed by alloy addition or gas injection. Blowing nitrogen gas is a more economic and advisable method since the nitrogen-bearing alloy is quite expensive and contains high content of impurities. A number of investigations have been reported on the solubility of nitrogen gas in pure iron [2] but few in iron-based multi-component alloys such as stainless steel.In the current study, the effects of steel chemical composition, temperature, superficial active elements and nitrogen-flow rate on transferring nitrogen to the steel were experimentally investigated with a high temperature induction furnace."