| Abstract Scope |
Salts play an essential role in the aluminum casthouse, whether added directly or generated in situ to strip alkali elements and capture inclusions from the melt. Despite their widespread use, the industry has no practical means of measuring how much salt is actually present in the liquid metal. This blind spot makes it difficult to attribute defects to residual or excess salt, and limited commercial interest, high cost, and long lead times have left the gap unfilled. It has become clear that a simple, deployable measurement tool is missing from the casthouse toolkit. In response, we have developed a low-cost probe intended for use in casthouses worldwide. In this paper, we describe the design of the probe and report preliminary results from industrial trials conducted across several participating casthouses. |