• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.43-46
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• 2011

Zinc consumption in a continuous galvanizing line is one of the highest operating cost items in the facility and minimizing zinc waste is a key economic objective for any operation. One of the primary sources of excessive loss of zinc is through the formation of top dross and skimmings in the coating pot. It has been reported that the top skimmings, manually removed from the bath, typically consist of more than 80% metallic zinc with the remainder being entrained dross particles ($Fe_2Al_5$) along with some oxides. Depending on the drossing practices and bath management, the composition of the removed top skimmings may contain up to 2 wt% aluminum and 1 wt% iron. On-going research efforts have been aimed at in-house recovery of the metallic zinc from the discarded top skimmings prior to selling to zinc recycling brokers. However, attempting to recover the zinc entrapped in the skimmings is difficult due to the complex nature of the intermetallic dross particles and the quality and volume of the recycled zinc is highly susceptible to fluctuations in processing parameters. As such, an efficient method to extract metallic zinc from top skimmings has been optimized through the use of a specialized thermo-mechanical process enabling a continuous galvanizing facility to conserve zinc usage on-site. Also, through this work, it has been identified that filtration of discrete dross particles has been proven effective at maintaining the cleanliness of the zinc. Future efforts may progress towards expanded utilization of filters in continuous galvanizing.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.175-186
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• 2010

The auto industry is demanding more ductile high-strength steel grades to build lighter and stronger car bodies. The hot-dip galvanizing problems of these new steel grades are creating a demand for an improved method to control zinc wettability. The simplest way to improve zinc wettability on industrial hot-dip galvanizing lines is to increase the strip immersion temperature at zinc bath entry for enhancing the aluminothermic reaction. However, this practice increases the reactivity due to overheating the zinc in the snout which induces the formation of brittle Fe-Zn compounds at the strip/coating interface with the formation of higher amounts of dross in the zinc bath and snout contamination. Thus, this simple practice can only be utilized for short production periods of one to two hours without deteriorating coating quality. This problem has been solved by employing a technique that allows the use of a higher and attuned strip immersion temperature at zinc bath entry while still maintaining a constantly low zinc bath temperature. This has been proven to provide the solution for both the improved wettability and a significant reduction in the amounts of dross in the zinc bath.