Silicon Manganese Testing And Analysis
Silicomanganese (SiMn) a type of Ferroalloy with high contents of high manganese and is made by heating a mixture of the Manganese Ore, Quartzite and carbon in a furnace.They undergo a thermal decomposition reaction. It is used as a deoxidizer and an alloying element in steel.
The standard grade Silico manganese contains 14 to 16% of silicon, 60 to 68% of manganese and 2% of carbon. The low carbon grade SiMn has carbon levels from 0.05 to 0.10%.
The standard grade Ferro manganese contains 65 to 75% of manganese and 5 - 7% of carbon.
The primary constituents analysed are Mn, Si, C, P and S. The trace Elements like Ti, B are required to be checked on demand.
BORON – The demand of today
In order to produce high grade plated steel sheets to be consumed at the automobile industry blast furnace mills have required to use manganese ferro-alloys (ferro-manganese and silico-manganese) containing low Boron but the content of Boron differs largely depending on the sources to produce manganese ore as raw material and, therefore, the supplies of manganese ferro-alloys with low Boron content have a big probability to be restrained by purchases of manganese ore in question.
The contents of Boron in silico-manganese as required by blast furnace mills are said to be 30 - 100 PPM . It seems to be desirable that, in the process of producing high grade plated steel sheets, even an infinitesimal content of Boron is detrimental for this production and the contents of Boron in manganese ferro-alloys have to be as low as possible.
However, chemical specifications in manganese ore have been restricted by origins and, therefore, an advantage of Boron contained in manganese ore is subject to origins. At present, manganese ore produced at the Groote Eylandt manganese mine of BHP Billiton in Australia has contained 5 - 20 PPM of Boron and this Boron content is thought to be the lowest in the world. South African manganese ore has contained 600 PPM of Boron and Gabonese manganese ore has contained 70 - 80 PPM of Boron.
Under the circumstances at present, it is questioned whether the inspection could have achieved this purpose or not. MSK R&D team has developed its own method of determining Boron content in Manganese alloy ( see the blog for detail ) which is pretty accurate and the results are matching at receiver end also.
MSK has capability to carry out tests of primary constituents in many labs in India and abroad. The Central laboratory at Kolkata has the capability to carry out trace elements to high accuracy level by ICP-OES technology.
MSK’s facilities in testing Ferro Alloys around the world:
COUNTRY
|
OFFICE |
INSPECTION FACILITY |
ANALYSIS HUB |
BRAZIL |
√ |
√ |
Brazil/South Africa |
CHINA |
√ |
√ |
China |
INDIA |
√ |
√ |
India |
INDONESIA |
√ |
√ |
Indonesia |
JAPAN |
√ |
X |
India |
KOREA |
√ |
X |
China |
OMAN |
√ |
√ |
Oman |
SOUTH AFRICA |
√ |
√ |
South Africa |
TURKEY |
√ |
√ |
Turkey |
UAE |
√ |
√ |
Oman |
ITALY |
X |
√ |
India/Turkey |
GERMANY |
X |
√ |
India/Turkey |
NEDERLAND |
X |
√ |
India/Turkey |
