During the steelmaking process, a great amount of slag is generated as a by-product. Vanadium-bearing steelmaking slags are classified as hazardous and require special handling and storage due to the toxicity of vanadium pentoxides. At the same time, such slags are valuable sources for the recovery of vanadium. The present work reviews the investigations on vanadium recovery from CaO-SiO2-FeO-V2O5 thin film slags under the neutral and oxidizing conditions in the temperature range 1653 K to 1693 K (1380 °C to 1420 °C) using Single Hot Thermocouple Technique (SHTT). The slag samples were analyzed by SEM/EDX. The results indicated that vanadium pentoxide evaporation can be up to 17.73% under an oxidizing atmosphere, while spinel formation under an argon atmosphere was detected in the conditions of thin film slags.

The influence of V2O5 on the phosphorus partition between liquid crude steel and heterogenous basic oxygen furnace (BOF) slag with CaO/SiO2 = 4.2 was investigated at a temperature of 1600 °C in a middle frequency induction furnace. Thereby the phosphorus transfer from “steel to slag” as well as from “slag to steel” was studied over a holding time of 60 minutes. The measured results were shown as phosphorus partition and phosphorus capacity and compared with the experimental values from the literature. It was found that V2O5 in highly basic BOF slags decreases phosphorus partition and phosphorus capacity. In addition, the resulting slags were investigated using a scanning electron microscope (SEM).