Steel quality requirements have become increasingly strict with strong demand for high strength and toughness steel plates and a new refractory generation with ultra-low carbon was developed to attend customers’ needs. Besides the advantages of energy economy in steel process and higher clean steel, some additional benefits include less shell deformation and less CO2 emissions.
 
Ultra-low carbon bricks with lower thermal conductivity were achieved by replacing natural graphite by a synthetic nano graphite. However, less carbon content bricks have several challenges to overcome, as: 1. higher thermal shock susceptibility, 2. higher wettability to the molten metal and slag and 3. lower oxidation resistance due to graphite particle reduction. Special nano graphite was conceived to withstand same oxidation resistance than natural flake graphite to compensate the nano particle size and to achieve the desired properties to match the requirements for steel industry applications.
 
Nanotechnology is part of the science that approaches the smallest fractions of matter that is possible to manipulate. Overall, it is expected that nanoscale materials will have significantly different properties from microscale ones, not only by traditional factors such as structure, composition and temperature but also by dimension. Thus, with nanotechnology, it is possible to tailor materials properties by adjusting their particle sizes.
 
This work presents the nano graphite approach to the magnesia-alumina-carbon (MAC) bricks with an expressive reduction of graphite content from 5%wt to 1%wt and MgO-C bricks from 8%wt to 0.6%wt. Properties and customer’s trials with nano graphite bricks in integrated steel ladle and BOF are shown with improving carbon efficiency and energy saving with expressive shell temperature and same performance.