Definition and Classification of Ferroalloys

Definition of ferroalloys

Ferroalloys are alloys in which one or more metal or non-metal elements are fused together with iron. For example, ferrosilicon is a silicide formed by silicon and iron such as Fe2Si, Fe5Si3, FeSi, FeSi2, etc. These are the main components of ferrosilicon, with silicon mainly present as FeSi and FeSi2, especially FeSi is more stable. Ferrosilicon with different compositions also has different melting points. For example, the melting point of 45% ferrosilicon is 1260℃ and 75% ferrosilicon is 1340℃. Ferromanganese is an alloy of manganese and iron, which also contains a small amount of other elements such as carbon, silicon, and phosphorus. Depending on its carbon content, ferromanganese is divided into high-carbon, medium-carbon, and low-carbon ferromanganese. Ferromanganese alloys with sufficient silicon content are called silicomanganese.

Ferroalloys are not directly usable metallic materials, but mainly used as intermediate raw materials for deoxidizers, reducers, and alloy additives in steel production and casting industries.

Classification of Ferroalloys

With the development of modern science and technology, various industries have increasingly high requirements for the variety and performance of steel, which has put forward higher requirements for ferroalloys. There are a variety of ferroalloys with multiple classification methods. Generally, they are classified by:

• Classifying according to the main elements in ferroalloys, they can be divided into series of ferroalloys metal, such as silicon, manganese, chromium, vanadium, titanium, tungsten, molybdenum, etc.

• Classifying by carbon content in ferroalloys, they can be divided into high-carbon, medium-carbon, low-carbon, micro-carbon, and ultra-micro-carbon varieties.
  

• Classifying by production methods, they can be divided into blast furnace ferroalloy, electric furnace ferroalloy, furnace external method (metal thermal method) ferroalloy, vacuum solid-state reduction method ferroalloy, converter ferroalloy, electrolysis ferroalloy, etc. In addition, there are special ferroalloys such as oxide briquettes and heat-generating ferroalloys.
  

• Classifying by two or more alloy elements contained in multielement ferroalloys includes alloy varieties such as silicon aluminum alloy, silicon calcium alloy, silicon manganese aluminum alloy, silicon calcium aluminum alloy, silicon calcium barium alloy, silicon aluminum barium calcium alloy, etc.
  

Among the three major ferroalloy series of silicon, manganese, and chromium, ferrosilicon, silicomanganese, and ferrochromium are the largest in production volume.

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