(1. 昆明理工大学 真空冶金国家工程实验室，昆明 650093；
2. 昆明理工大学 云南省有色金属真空冶金重点实验室，昆明 650093；
3. 昆明理工大学 省部共建复杂有色金属资源清洁利用国家重点实验室，昆明 650093)
摘 要: 冶金工业作为国民经济发展的支柱，常见的冶炼技术有火法、湿法、电渣重熔、电子束熔炼和等离子体冶炼。等离子体具有热性能高、能量集中、化学活性高、冷却速度快和反应气氛可控等特点，已广泛的应用于熔炼、精炼和表面冶金。本文综述等离子技术在熔炼、精炼和表面冶金等领域的研究进展。其中，等离子体技术在熔炼和精炼中具有产品纯度高、功率可调、气氛可控、转化率与热利用率高和环境友好等优势；等离子体技术在表面冶金中具有涂层微观组织稳定、可获得传统工艺难以制备的合金层等特点。针对当下等离子体冶金技术存在设备寿命短、工艺参数难控制、成本高及国内冶金工业应用较少等问题，提出相应的解决策略和分析。并指出优化等离子体设备的设计，提高自动化水平；结合等离子体数值模拟等手段找到最佳工艺参数，在提高生产过程稳定性和产物品质的同时降低能耗和维护成本以及开发更大功率的大型等离子体炬，实现等离子体技术在冶金工业中的大规模应用为未来的研究重点。最后，对等离子体冶金技术的发展方向进行展望。
关键字: 等离子体冶金；等离子体熔炼；等离子体精炼；表面冶金
（1. National Engineering Laboratory for Vacuum Metallurgy, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650093, China;
2. Key Laboratory for Nonferrous Vacuum Metallurgy of Yunnan Province, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650093, China;
3. State Key Laboratory of Complex Nonferrous Metal Resources Clear Utilization, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650093, China）
Abstract:Metallurgical industry as the pillar of national economic development, common smelting technologies include fire, wet, electroslag remelting, electron beam smelting, and plasma smelting. Due to its merits of high thermal performance, concentrated energy, high chemical activity, fast cooling rate, and controllable reaction atmosphere, plasma has been widely used in smelting, refining, and surface metallurgy to date. This paper reviews the research progress of plasma metallurgical technology in the field of smelting, refining and surface metallurgy. There into, the plasma technology used in smelting and refining has the advantages of high purity of product, adjustable power, controllable atmosphere, high conversion rate and heat utilization rate, and environmental- friendly production process. The coatings prepared by plasma surface metallurgy have stable microstructure, excellent properties, obtaining alloy layers, which are difficult to be prepared in traditional process. In the review, the problems of this technology were illustrated, such as short equipment life, difficult control of the process parameters, higher cost, less domestic metallurgical industry applications, and the corresponding solutions have been proposed. Therefore, the next research should focus on the following: optimizing the design of plasma equipment, improving the level of automation; combining with plasma numerical simulation to find the best technological parameters boost the stability of the synthesis process and product quality, thus reducing energy consumption and production costs; it is necessary to develop the large plasma torch with higher power to realize the large-scale application of plasma technology in metallurgical industry. Eventually, the developing guidelines of plasma metallurgy method were looked forward.
Key words: plasma metallurgy; plasma smelting; plasma refining; surface metallurgy
