Thermal Behavior of Ti-64 Primary Material in Electron Beam Melting Process.

The Electron Beam Melting (EBM) process has emerged as either an alternative or a complement to vacuum arc remelting of titanium alloys, since it is capable of enhancing the removal of exogenous inclusions by dissolution or sedimentation. The melting of the primary material is a first step of this continuous process, which has not been studied so far and is investigated experimentally and numerically in the present study. Experiments have been set up in a 100 kW laboratory furnace with the aim of analyzing the effect of melting rate on surface temperature of Ti-64 bars. It was found that melting rate is nearly proportional to the EB power while the overheating temperature remains roughly independent of the melting rate and equal to about 100 °C. The emissivity of molten Ti-64 was found to be 0.22 at an average temperature of about 1760 °C at the tip of the bar. In parallel, a mathematical model of the thermal behavior of the material during melting has been developed. The simulations revealed valuable results about the melting rate, global heat balance and thermal gradient throughout the bar, which agreed with the experimental values to a good extent. The modeling confirms that the overheating temperature of the tip of the material is nearly independent of the melting rate.

Toward Better Control of Inclusion Cleanliness in a Gas Stirred Ladle Using Multiscale Numerical Modeling.

The industrial objective of lowering the mass of mechanical structures requires continuous improvement in controlling the mechanical properties of metallic materials. Steel cleanliness and especially control of inclusion size distribution have, therefore, become major challenges. Inclusions have a detrimental effect on fatigue that strongly depends both on inclusion content and on the size of the largest inclusions. Ladle treatment of liquid steel has long been recognized as the processing stage responsible for the inclusion of cleanliness. A multiscale modeling has been proposed to investigate the inclusion behavior. The evolution of the inclusion size distribution is simulated at the process scale due to coupling a computational fluid dynamics calculation with a population balance method integrating all mechanisms, i.e., flotation, aggregation, settling, and capture at the top layer. Particular attention has been paid to the aggregation mechanism and the simulations at an inclusion scale with fully resolved inclusions that represent hydrodynamic conditions of the ladle, which have been specifically developed. Simulations of an industrial-type ladle highlight that inclusion cleanliness is mainly ruled by aggregation. Quantitative knowledge of aggregation kinetics has been extracted and captured from mesoscale simulations. Aggregation efficiency has been observed to drop drastically when increasing the particle size ratio.

Determination of ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid in nuclear waste by high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray mass spectrometry.

EDTA is a chelating agent that has been used in decontamination processes. Its quantification is required for nuclear waste management because it affects the mobility of radionuclides and metals in environment and, thus, can harm the safety of the storage. Ion-pair chromatography coupled with electrospray mass spectrometry detection is a convenient method for quantitative analysis of EDTA but EDTA should be present as a single anionic chelate form. However, radioactive liquid wastes contain high concentrations of heavy metals and salts and consequently, EDTA is present as several chelates. Speciation studies were carried out to choose a metal cation to be added in excess to the solution to obtain a major chelate form. Fe is the predominant cation and Fe(III)-EDTA is thermodynamically favored but these speciation studies showed that ferric hydroxide precipitated above pH 2. Consequently, it was not possible to quantify EDTA as Fe(III)-EDTA complex. Therefore, Ni(2+) was chosen but its use implied pretreatment with a base of the solution to eliminate Fe. Deuterated EDTA was used as tracer in order to validate the whole procedure, from the treatment with a base to the final analysis by HPLC-ESI-MS. This analytical method was successfully applied for EDTA quantification in two real effluents resulting from a nuclear liquid waste process. A recovery rate between 60 and 80% was obtained. The limit of detection of this method was determined at 34×10(-9)mol L(-1).

In situ synthesis of monolithic stationary phases for electrochromatographic separations: study of polymerization conditions.

Acrylate-based monolithic capillary columns were prepared from fused-silica capillaries using UV photopolymerization. The effect of the pretreatment of the capillary wall surface before polymerization was investigated and several procedures were compared. The columns were characterization by van Deemter curves and SEM imaging. The results indicated that a pre-silanization of the capillary wall in order to introduce methacrylate groups at the wall surface gave similar efficiencies but more homogeneous structures than when the silanization agent was introduced in the polymerization mixture. The conditioning of the capillary before silanization, especially the conditions of basic rinsing was also an important factor. The effect of the dose of UV light that was applied for the polymerization had also been investigated. The results demonstrated that the irradiation energy is a critical parameter. The minimum energy threshold required to obtain a suitable monolith was 3 J/cm(2) and the maximum was around 12 J/cm(2). A higher energy destroys the monolith. Within the convenient range of energy, the columns had the same efficiency and a good structure as seen by SEM imaging. Using the optimized procedure for the pretreatment and an adequate energy, the column-to-column repeatability was found good (n = 12). The repeatability was obtained for the plate height at two velocity values, the retention factor and the electroosmotic mobility with RSD values below 10.