Effect of Cr2O3 on Physicochemical Properties of CaO-SiO2-FetO Slags during BOF Smelting Process of Chromium-Bearing Iron
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is a well written and scientifically sound. The techniques are well described the results clear. I have no objections to this paper being published.
The paper is using well established techniques to study a particular system of some importance. The work has been carried out to a good scientific level and the results obtained are useful and important to industry. The authors conclusions are supported by both experimental results and thermodynamic calculations.
Author Response
Dear Editor and Reviewers:
Sorry to reply to your review comments only now, we spent a lot of time revising the manuscript. Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript. Your review comments are very helpful to us to improve the manuscript to be a better scientific level. In response to your question, I have removed the template content that was not removed from the manuscript. It is hoped that a revised version of this manuscript will be approved.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Please define all the acronyms before their first appearance in text “BOF smelting”
the abstract should be more structured as difficult to understand the industrial importance and also not clear the outcome of this research from abstract – it seems just a general research to detect the amount of different Cr2O3 and their influence
what does means “co-occurring”, “incrisesed” – please check the entire work for different typos
the first paragraph should be associated to industrial impact and the challenge that the research community faces in order to bring out this study – things that are not indicated now
the equation 1-3 and Figure 1 should be moved from introduction !
“The softening zone expanded.” Not clear what do you want to say here
Not clear which is the contribution of authors to improve the research state of art and novelty of this work – there are even more papers that are focused in this aspect and also it was very difficult to understand if there is any novelty.
Line 95 -109 should be removed from the manuscript
Please check the English as there are many poor expression “Take the high-temperature samples” this is just an example…many other were found the same
Line 144 -146 should be removed !
“which 179 the author believes are spinel particles” this should be proved not speculation !Please check with the literature and also with EDS or XRD !
Figure 4 and 5 indicate Cr and Fe however In Figure 5b are also other elements ! please check it carefully
Label in Figure 6 on the X is wrong as you have grain not “crain”
Figure 9 is an intuitive structure not necessary detected by authors.
The discussion section is interesting but it refer too much to state of art and not authors research and achievements
Author Response
Dear Editor and Reviewers:
Sorry to reply to your review comments only now, we spent a lot of time revising the manuscript. Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript. Your review comments are very helpful to us to improve the manuscript to be a better scientific level. In response to your question, I have removed the template content that was not removed from the manuscript. It is hoped that a revised version of this manuscript will be approved.
See attachment for detailed responses.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Lines 95-109 are text from the Instructions for Authors that have been included in the manuscript. These should be removed.
In a few of the equations, the number 0 has been confused with the letter O; Fe304 instead of Fe3O4. These should be corrected.
A better explanation of Fig. 9 is needed, as the information in the graph is insufficient.
Author Response
Dear Editor and Reviewers:
Sorry to reply to your review comments only now, we spent a lot of time revising the manuscript. Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript. Your review comments are very helpful to us to improve the manuscript to be a better scientific level. Please see the attachment. It is hoped that a revised version of this manuscript will be approved. All comments and suggestions mentioned by the reviewers have been listed below one by one.
- Lines 95-109 are text from the Instructions for Authors that have been included in the manuscript. These should be removed
Response 1: We are very sorry that we made the reviewer have such doubts. We have removed these in the revised manuscript
- In a few of the equations, the number 0 has been confused with the letter O; Fe304 instead of Fe3O4. These should be corrected.
Response 2: Thank you for your careful work and helpful comments. We have made corrections to all formulas in the manuscript.
- A better explanation of Fig. 9 is needed, as the information in the graph is insufficient.
Response 3: We're sorry to have troubled you and other readers because this sentence was poorly expressed. Based on your comments, we have revised the description of Figure 8 (original Figure 9) in the revised manuscript.
Line 222. “As shown in Figure 8, the content of the spinel phase of different samples are calculated by using FactSage 8.1. The spinel is mainly composed of FeCr2O4 and Fe3O4, and the FeCr2O4 is the main component, which account for more than 90wt%. At 1500℃, when the content of Cr2O3 increases from 0.99 to 9.09wt%, the amount of the spinel increases from 0.0799wt% to 12.4722wt%. “
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
The author reported the effect of Cr2O3 content on the physical and chemical properties of the CaO-SiO2-FetO system converter slag, and studied the precipitation of chromium-containing spinel in the slag. The paper has certain novelty and advantages for chromium-containing semi-steel converter steelmaking, and has value for publishing in Metals. I suggest this manuscript can be published after the following minor revisions:
1. Page 3, line 87 and table 1. The authors mentioned that the Cr2O3 contents of the A0-A5 samples were 0%, 1%, 3%, 5%, 7%, and 10%, respectively. However, the Cr2O3 contents in Table 1 and other parts of the text were 0%, 0.99%, 2.91%, 4.76%, 6.54%, and 9.09%, respectively.
2. Page3, line 127. "air-cool" seems wrong? Should it be "air-cooled"
3. Page 4, line 144. The author seems to have not removed the content in the template.
4. Page 7, figure 4. The author seems to have over-processed the EDS mapping result. Fe element appears to be hardly distributed in the pyroxene phase. This is unreasonable. Figure 5(a) has the same problem. Author needs to express your content in a different method.
5. Page 8. Should the data for A1 be included in Figure 6? The article does not seem to explain the effect of Cr content in A1 on the particle size of the precipitated spinel. Are the authors missing data for this section?
6. Similar to second opinion, lines 95 to 109 in the manuscript belong to the prompt in the template, authors are advised to delete and check the full text for similar issues.
Author Response
Dear Editor and Reviewers:
Sorry to reply to your review comments only now, we spent a lot of time revising the manuscript. Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript. Your review comments are very helpful to us to improve the manuscript to be a better scientific level. It is hoped that a revised version of this manuscript will be approved. All comments and suggestions mentioned by the reviewers have been listed below one by one.
- Page 3, line 87 and table 1. The authors mentioned that the Cr2O3 contents of the A0-A5 samples were 0%, 1%, 3%, 5%, 7%, and 10%, respectively. However, the Cr2O= contents in Table 1 and other parts of the text were 0%, 0.99%, 2.91%, 4.76%, 6.54%, and 9.09%, respectively.
Response 1: 1%, 3%, 5%, 7% and 10% of Cr2O3 were additionally added to the 19%CaO-42%SiO2-39%FetO system. Therefore, the total content of the A1-A5 samples became 101%, 103%, 105%, 107% and 110%. The composition of the sample was then converted to 100%. At this time, the actual amount of Cr2O3 added in the A0-A5 samples became 0.99%, 2.91%, 4.76%, 6.54% and 9.09%, respectively.
- Page3, line 127. "air-cool" seems wrong? Should it be "air-cooled"
Response 2: Thank you for your careful work and helpful comments. I apologize for my poor English expression. Based on your comments, I am modifying this sentence.
Line 104. “Then the molten slag was extracted with the syringe and hollow quartz tube with a diameter of 4 mm, and the slag was cooled in air.”
- Page 4, line 144. The author seems to have not removed the content in the template. Similar to second opinion, lines 95 to 109 in the manuscript belong to the prompt in the template, authors are advised to delete and check the full text for similar issues.
Response 3: We are very sorry that we made the reviewer have such doubts. We have removed these in the revised manuscript.
- Page 7, figure 4. The author seems to have over-processed the EDS mapping result. Fe element appears to be hardly distributed in the pyroxene phase. This is unreasonable. Figure 5(a) has the same problem. Author needs to express your content in a different method.
Response 4: Thank the reviewer for proposing these questions. Sorry for our poor expression here. This section discusses the structure and composition of the spinel phase, the distribution of Fe and Cr elements in the slag phase is not important. Based on your suggestion, I have modified the titles of the two figures.
Line 178. “Distribution of Fe and Cr elements in the spine phase in Sample A3 according to EDS mapping results.”
Line 181. “Distribution of Fe and Cr elements in the spine phase in Sample A4 according to EDS mapping results. (a) surface scanning result of area “A” in figure 2-(d); (b) line scanning result of line “a” in figure 2-(e).”
- Page 8. Should the data for A1 be included in Figure 6? The article does not seem to explain the effect of Cr content in A1 on the particle size of the precipitated spinel. Are the authors missing data for this section?
Response 5: Thanks to the reviewer has made a very good point here. We are very sorry that we made the reviewer have such doubts. Since the Cr2O3 content of the A1 sample is only 0.99wt%, the activity of the Cr element in the slag is very low. Chromium-containing spinel phase hardly formed. In addition, the chromium-containing spinel phase is indistinguishable from the chromium-free spinel phase in the SEM+EDS results. We cannot effectively count the crystal size of the chromium-containing spinel in the A1 sample. Therefore, there is no data for A1 in Figure 6.
Reviewer 5 Report
The manuscript discussed a specific situation of slagging process in convert smelting hot molten containning Cr. The topic is somewhat intersting for readers. But there are some problems founded in it. The first one is that language expression in the paper is not good enough. So many sentences should be modified for readers to easly understand. The second one is that some important points are not given detail description，for example， samples preparing process. The third one is that logistic structure of the paper is not so clear that readers could easly understand the relationship between experiments and the conclusions.
Are the line 95-109 and 144-146 really the parts of the manuscript? Please cheque them carfully.
Is with enough experimental evidence to support the summay given in the line 167-169？
Line 195， is it the real table 3 header？
Is the equation 2 correct？
Author Response
Dear Editor and Reviewers:
Sorry to reply to your review comments only now, we spent a lot of time revising the manuscript. Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript. Your review comments are very helpful to us to improve the manuscript to be a better scientific level. We have improved the language expression and revised the Materials and methods section of the manuscript. Please see the attachment. It is hoped that a revised version of this manuscript will be approved. All comments and suggestions mentioned by the reviewers have been listed below one by one.
- Are the line 95-109 and 144-146 really the parts of the manuscript? Please cheque them carfully.
Response 1: Thank you for your careful work and helpful comments. We are very sorry that we made this mistake. We have removed these in the revised manuscript.
- Is with enough experimental evidence to support the summay given in the line 167-169？
Response 2: Thanks to the reviewer has made a very good point here. I apologize for my poor English expression. The intensity of XRD peaks is positively correlated with the content of the phase. As the Cr2O3 content increases, the intensity of the XRD peaks of CaFeSi2O6 decreases, while the intensity of the XRD peaks of spinel increases. Therefore, with the increase of Cr2O3 content, the content of CaFeSi2O6 decreases and the content of spinel increases. And we have repeatedly demonstrated this conclusion in the "3. Results" section of the manuscript. Based on your suggestion, I have revised this sentence.
Line 146. “The intensity of the XRD peaks is positively correlated with the content of the crystalline phase. In summary, the liquid phase in the CaO-SiO2-FetO system gradually decreases with the increase of w(Cr2O3), and the content of chromium-containing spinel gradually increases. This will be discussed further in subsequent sections.”
- Line 195， is it the real table 3 header？
Response 3: We are very sorry that we made the reviewer have such doubts. We have revised the table 3 header in the revised manuscript.
Line 176. “Table 3. The EDS analysis results of each point in Fig. 2-(d), at%.”
- Is the equation 2 correct？
Response 4: Your suggestion is very helpful to us. Equation 2 shouldn't be in the manuscript. In the revised manuscript, we have removed it.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
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Reviewer 5 Report
Comparing with the last version, the quality of the manuscript is improved obviously. So it could be considered to be accepted. For higher standard consideration it would be suggested that the design reason of slag samples composition could be given more detail.
