Development of an ICP-AES technique for the determination of nickel content in blast furnace inputs

Chemical Laboratory, R & D and Scientific Services, Tata Steel Limited, Jamshedpur-831 001, Jharkhand, India E-mail : r.chatti@tatasteel.com, shrenivas@tatasteel.com, k.udpa@tatasteel.com The importance of nickel in the steel industry is significant due to a wide variety of applications as an alloying component in stainless steel. In this context, the present paper endeavors to determine the nickel content of different blast furnace (BF) inputs such as iron ore, coal, coke and sinter. This has been done by analyzing the different raw materials using Inductively Coupled Plasma-Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-AES) technique. The ICP-AES technique was chosen because it was observed that as the content of nickel was very low in these raw materials, it would be difficult to analyze the same using classical methods such as the dimethylglyoxime (gravimetric) method. The major objective of the present study was to deliver an accurate and less-time consuming method based on an instrumental technique, namely, the ICP-AES technique for analysis of nickel (low content) in different blast furnace inputs. In this context, the established method was validated by the evaluation of certified reference materials (CRMs) namely ECRM 681-1 and ECRM 679-1 and thus, it was felt that the present method was very much appropriate for determination of nickel content below 0.01 %