In the paper, results of the study on manganese evaporation from the OT4 alloy are presented. In the experiments, the effects of pressure on the manganese evaporation kinetics and the stages that limit the evaporation rate were investigated. It was demonstrated that the rate of manganese evaporation from the alloy increased with pressure reduction in the system. When the pressure decreases from 1000 Pa to 10 Pa, the value of overall mass transfer kMn increases from 3.9*10^-6 ms^-1 to 208.4*10^-6 ms^-1. At the same time, the manganese fraction in the alloy decreased from 1.49% mass to 0.045% mass. Within the whole pressure range, the analysed evaporation process is diffusion-controlled. For pressures above 50 Pa, the determining stage is transfer in the gaseous phase, while for pressures below 50 Pa, it is transfer in the liquid phase.

One of the promising technology that guarantee the high-purity of the processed metal is induction skull melting. The quality of the melting process within such a system strongly depends on the cold crucible design. Hence, the experimental investigation of the cold crucible melting was performed. The experimental investigation was performed for various initial mass of the load. The results of that analysis were used for the assessment of the alloy temperature during the process, free surface shape and the area as well as the liquid metal emissivity. The collected results of the thermal analysis showed that the temperature of molten metal increased within the power input increase. Moreover, results of that analysis showed that the characteristic tooth-shaped jags were created mostly at the centre of the cold crucible segments. In addition, experimental results are suitable for the numerical models validation and further investigation of the cold crucible design.

In this paper, the velocity field and turbulence effects that occur inside a crucible of a typical induction furnace were investigated. In the first part of this work, a free surface shape of the liquid metal was measured in a ceramic crucible. Then a numerical model of aluminium melting process was developed. It took into account coupling of electromagnetic and thermofluid fields that was performed using commercial codes. In the next step, the sensitivity analysis of turbulence modelling in the liquid domain was performed. The obtained numerical results were compared with the measurement data. The performed analysis can be treated as a preliminary approach for more complex mathematical modelling for the melting process optimisation in crucible induction furnaces of different types.