How to make N2 listen to you in steel making!

All steels contain some amount of dissolved gases such as oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen of which nitrogen is effective in improving the mechanical and corrosion properties of stainless steels if it remains in solid solution or precipitates as very fine and coherent nitrides or carbo-nitrides with iron or alloying elements. When nitrogen is added to austenitic steels it can simultaneously improve fatigue life, strength, work hardening rate, wear and localized corrosion resistance. High nitrogen Martensitic stainless steels show improved resistance to localized corrosion (pitting, crevice and intergranular corrosion) over their carbon containing counterparts. Because of this, the high nitrogen steels are being considered a new promising class of engineering materials.However, in carbon or low alloy steels, dissolved nitrogen is not desirable. In this paper, methods attempted to either increase or decrease the nitrogen content in various alloy steels are described.