High Temperature Quartz

Quartz is one of the main raw materials for silicon and ferrosilicon production. Together with various carbon sources, quartz is added to a submerged arc furnace where the temperature is above 2000 °C. Through a carbothermic reduction, SiO2 will be reduced to Si. As the quartz is heated, its properties and appearance will change and this can affect the furnace operations. By knowing how each quartz type will behave at high temperatures, this information can be used to select the raw material or the furnace parameters such that the furnace operations are optimized. This will increase the yield for the process, and hence save time, energy, money and interventions in nature. There are large variation in furnace performance for different quartz type, so it is important to select the one most suited.

The aim of my work is to measure fundamental properties like disintegration as a result of shock heating, phase transformations and the enthalpy change associated with them and crack distribution, and also link these properties to chemical analysis for the different quartz types.

Resource Group: Merete Tangstad (NTNU), Eli Ringdalen (SINTEF), Aasgeir Valderhaug (Elkem), Harald Vegge (Elkem)

Contact: karin.jusnes@ntnu.no 

Students at Metal Production