Some Aspects of the Sampling and Analysis of Ferro Alloys

The most important, and usually the only important, chara-cteristic of a ferro-alloy is its composition. It is important to the producer of the alloy, since he must be able to assess his recovery and costs. It is important to the buyer, who wants to know that he is getting what he pays for : in the case of ferro-niobium, for example, he may be paying as much as £1,500 per ton. It is equally important to the steel maker, who is using it to react with impurities in the bath or to add specific amounts of one or more constituents to the steel. Thus an accurate
analysis of the alloy for its main and minor constituents
is essential. But the work of the analytical chemist
is useless or misleading unless he is provided with a
truly representative sample in suitable form, and the
drawing of such a sample in the case of ferro-alloys
presents a number of problems.