VOL. 9, NO. 9
CORRESPONDENCE
1659
Vanadium deoxidizes the molten steel, refines the grain, increases elastic limit, strength, hardness, and resistance to shock, to fatigue, and to wear. Added to chromium steel it enhances the valuable properties imparted to steel by chromium, hence the value of chromevanadium steel. It is quite possible that this beneficial effect of vanadium may he due, in part a t least, to its powerful deoxidizing action. If, however, vanadium is no longer used as a deoxidizing agent, I accept the criticism. Since my statement in Part XI about the use of ferro-titanium in steel2 may also require some amplification, the following passage from Thornton's monograph on t i t a n i u m b a y be quoted:
As early as 1901, and perhaps sooner, Rossi seems to have been aware that titanium, when added to steel in the form of ferro-titanium, is capable of bringing about certain desirable results; and, since in some cases analyses of titanium-treated steels showed little or no residual titanium, he was inclined to think that the improvement was due t o some indirect action on the part of the titanium and not to an ordinary alloying effect. This supposition has since been fully confirmed by many experimentsit being now well known that the beneficial action of ferro-titanium, when added to iron or steel in the molten condition, depends upon the fact that a t high temperatures titanium has a very strong tendency to combine with both oxygen and nitrogen to form stable oxides and nitrides, which rise to the surface and are removed with the slag, thus sweeping the metal free of air vesicles (or from these gases otherwise held) and a t the same time preventing segregation. Hence the ingots or castings show greater soundness, cleanness and freedom from segregated impurities as compared with the untreated steel. Sincerely yours, MARY ELVIRA WEBKS THE UNIVERSITY
OF KANSAS LAWRENCE, KANSAS
THE ALUMINUM STATUE OF CHARLES M. HALL On page 1408 of the August, 1032, issue of the JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION the credit line-Courtesy of Fisher Scientific Company-was inadvertently omitted under the illustration of the aluminum statue of Charles M. Hall.
' THORNTON, 1927, p. 69.
"Titanium," The Chemical Catalog Co., Inc., New York City.
