Formation of Alloy Chemical Composition Produced by Aluminothermy on Alloying with Tungsten Extracted from Scheelite Concentrate

The practice of manufacturing tungsten-containing wear-resistant steels and products made from them currently comes down to alloying iron-carbon alloys with ferrotungsten. Preparation of ferroalloys from ore concentrates is a multiple operation, energy- and material-intensive process. It is proposed to reduce production costs related to separate manufacture of ferrotungsten and iron-carbon alloys by combining the specified stages into one using metallothermy. Tungsten-containing iron-carbon alloy formation is accomplished by an exothermic reaction in specially formulated mixtures containing a reducing agent, iron oxides, and scheelite concentrate. Use of available and cheap local crude ore of complex chemical composition and metallurgical scale may give rise to an unpredictable nature of chemical reaction and also uncertainty of the final product chemical composition. In order to establish features of the effect of reducing agent and scheelite concentrate within thermite compositions on metal final yield and chemical composition of alloys prepared by metallothermy research is conducted connected with aluminothermic preparation of iron-carbon alloys containing tungsten.