Heat transfer in ESR slags

The extensively published models of the ESR process assume a singular value of the slag thermal conductivity and employ that value in a format which assumes heat conduction entirely by a phonon mechanism. In this work we investigate the possibility that the mechanism is a phonon/photon mechanism in a slag which is diathermanous. The conclusion is that such a model assumption better represents the practical behaviour of the process and should be used in model structures. It is also suggested that the concept has a wider application to other metallurgical processes which use slags having some degree of photon conductivity.