What is Pure Calcium Metal
As we known, steelmaking field and chemistry field are major uses for calcium metal. It can be produced by electrolysis and aluminothermic method. Generally speaking, calcium metal produced by electrolysis is purer than by aluminothermic method. Concretely speaking, for electrolysis, its purity is above 98.5% approximately; while, for another, 97% is its usual purity.
As for their physical properties, it also has many differences. For example, it is softer than aluminothermic to dispose with higher recovery.
Uses for Metallic Calcium
Calcium is the second element in metal activity sequence table that we learned in senior high school, thus, calcium metal is more active than most of other metallic elements. From this point, we believe that you can guess its uses more or less. Not only deoxidation, desulphurization but also degassing in steel making or cast iron is its major use. Its uses depend on different process, such as alloy agent during production of non-ferrous alloys, deoxidizer during production of high-purity steel and so on. We won’t list them one by one here.
Calcium Metal Manufacturer
According to calcium metal’s general properties such as massive, crumb, etc., we can see clearly that it can be used to make calcium cored wire that in order to smelt high-quality steel and other steels.
Not only China, but also U.S., Russia, France and so on produce calcium metal all over the world. Including, manufacturers that located in the first and second largest country in North America and France has been reduced or stopped for a long time, because production costs is expensive and plenty of contaminants polluted the environment. Therefore, they have to procure calcium metal from other countries such as China and Russia. The total yield for this two countries can meet the demand in global almost.
In the early 1980s, implemented planned economy policy just right, calcium metal’s application was very limited so that it started to be exported to abroad such as Japan, Australia and Europe. Frankly speaking, at that moment, electrolysis was main production method in China for a lot of factories and it was mainly used as deoxidizer and purifier of nuclear fuel.
For international market, the demand for calcium metal kept stable all the time and climbed slightly in some years. However, as science and technology progressed, everything will be eliminated with new thing appears. Calcium metal is no exception. When it can be instead of other alloys such as calcium silicon, magnesium metal in application aspect, some customers are willing to procure calcium silicon alloy or magnesium metal especially price for calcium metal is not as expected.
At the end of 2004 and 2005, some steel mills started to procure equipment for producing from other countries. These led to situation that demand for calcium cored wire rose sharply especially in China. At the same time, calcium metal manufacturer in Russia produced abnormally, it caused the phenomenon that price for calcium metal went up in short time. And it was in short supply. Under this circumstance, market promoted the price climbed usually. Contrapose this circumstance, some factories had to abandon the old business and started to produce Ca metal by aluminothermic. Under this background, besides, as a result of big difference in price between electrolysis and aluminothermic, some customers purchased calcium metal by aluminothermic.
At the end of 2005, price returned to normal gradually. It had two reasons mainly. On one hand, a calcium metal manufacturer in Inner Mongolia has been expanded and adjusted price according to current market. On the other hand, Russian manufacturer started producing normally. Thus, these are the reasons why it returned to normal. Demand for calcium based cored wire downed. In terms of electrolysis calcium metal, it was in oversupply gradually and price trend towards reasonably. Additionally, price for aluminothermic raw material was fluctuated and costs rose drastically. Price difference for two methods was more and more big. At that time, we believe that you can guess what will be happened under this situation absolutely, that is purchasing enthusiasm for aluminothermic calcium metal was weaker than electrolysis. These factors caused plenty of factories that used aluminothermic method closed.
At subsequent times, international market for calcium metal became more and more fierce, as a consequence of normalization for Russian calcium metal market. It is an interesting phenomenon that foreign customers declined the price consecutively. At the end, price for calcium metal by electrolysis method dropped.
As we mentioned above, foreign customers preferred to purchase calcium metal that produced by electrolysis rather than purchase thermite calcium metal.
