Hi everyone,
I am looking for a potential source of "kish graphite", a by-product of
steelmaking from my understanding. I would gladly pay for a 4-5 kg sample.
Please contact me using snipped-for-privacy@cegep-chicoutimi.qc.ca
Alain Couture, Ph.D.
Your best chance, in Canada, would be Dofasco, in Hamilton. They'd
probably just give it to you. It occurs, mostly, when molten pig iron is
poured from one vessel into another. Its composition is mainly carbon
(graphite) with some silicon (not silica). This material precipitates
from the molten iron as its temperature drops. The kish is very light, &
a 4-5 kg sample will occupy a fairly large volume. may take a while to
accumulate.
Hi Alain,
If you find some grab a bunch of it and put some on ebay. I'd like to see
what this stuff is like. I collect odd materials.
Cheers,
Scott Yannitell
Separating the graphite from the rest of the steel plant dust would be a
pain although not too hard in bulk if there was money in it. If you are
investigating a potential use for large quantities of dust contact your
nearest steel works with a blast furnace / oxygen steel plant and ask them
for a sample I would have thought they would send you a sample of raw dust.
Kish graphite isn't dust - the whole point about it is that it's grown
by some weird form of randomly occuring epitaxy. I've only seen it in
crystallography labs.
It grows in chunks that can be large (maybe kilogrammes), but the
interesting part of it with the consistent crystal structure is only a
few grammes.
It appears there are two related things called Kish graphite.
This is what I call kish graphite:-
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"The hot metal is immediately poured directly onto the scrap from a transfer
ladle. Fumes and kish (graphite flakes from the carbon saturated hot metal)
are emitted from the vessel's mouth and collected by the pollution control
system"
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"The large flakes of type C flake graphite are typical of kish graphite that
is formed in hypereutectic irons. These large flakes enhance resistance to
thermal shock by increasing thermal conductivity and decreasing elastic
modulus. On the other hand, large flakes are not conducive to good surface
finishes on machined parts or to high strength or good impact resistance. "
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"Past research on the technical feasibility of recovering high-quality flake
graphite from steelmaking kish may further
boost graphite recycling efforts under favorable economic conditions.2
Abundance of graphite in the world market and
continuing low prices, however, inhibit increased recycling efforts.
Information on the quantity and value of recycled
graphite is not available."
I'm curious about the etymology of "kish".
It sounds like some old Anglo-Saxon word.
We don't have many of those in the computer
business. Most of our older terms such as
"file", "record", "field", etc. are inherited from
the punched card business. And most of the
people working in computers today are
completely unaware of this history.
Every now and then I stumble across older
words in books on ceramics and metals like
"cullet", "grog", "smalts", "lemel", etc.
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