Crystallization of blast furnace slag glass melted in SnO2 crucible

The scope of this work was to study the possibility of obtaining glass–ceramics from Brazilian blast furnace slag. Glass melting on laboratory scale is usually carried out in platinum crucibles, which are normally not attacked by molten silicates and can be easily cleaned and reused. However, the use of platinum-coated furnaces is not economically viable for producing these materials on industrial scale. As an alternative, SnO2 crucibles were used to melt glasses. Crucible corrosion was observed and thus the effect of SnO2 on the crystallization behavior of the resulting glass was studied. For this purpose differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), X-ray diffraction, optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and micro-Raman spectroscopy were used. Besides merwinite, melilte, larnite and wollastonite, a crystalline phase containing tin was only possible to be determined by Raman spectroscopy, due to the presence of a band at 570 cm−1, attributed to a calcium tin silicate.