What would be considered "Ductile Iron"?

Originally Posted by scalemomma

As a newbie to the scrap industry, I see this item listed on our company scrap software,and have often wondered what it was. What exactly is ductile iron?

Ductile iron is a cast iron with additives. Unless you know what the mixture is and can find somebody that is willing to pay based on that.....
You are better off (at least here) selling it as cast iron.

Couple of years ago gray cast (pig iron) jumped because of a shortage if iron oxide.

Either way sell it as cast iron and keep in mind the size of the scrap pieces.

Okay. I work in the power transmission industry. About half of what we use is ductile iron. Ductile iron is still cast iron. Steel is actually iron. Ductile iron is not as pure as cast but it is really close. Depending on what you are doing and what you are using it for depends on what you add to the iron. The amount of additives are still low compared to other forms of iron so there for most yards will pay cast. I can show you many quotes on this from some big name players here in TN. The reason I started scrapping was because of the recycle program I set up for my employer.
Now you want something good? Wish I had the amount of vacuum degassed steel we throw away.

Originally Posted by scalemomma

Checking it out!

Here I will save you the time. Vacuum degassing is a secondary process used on steel. Since it has already been secondary processed it is often straight melt if it is clean. This means the foundry your yard sells to saves money. This means they will pay the yard a little more. Your yard probably only has one or two people that even know this.
Example: I sent 26,000 lbs to $IM$ metal. If this was shred they would have paid (at that time $.14 per lb) and yes this was in the last 3 months.
The actual price paid for the degassed steel (52100) was $.246 per lb and I still think they screwed me. Should have been closer to $.32 per lb (but they did handle the dray and bins).

If you look at a piece of water service line made of ductile iron you should see two colors. The outside color is ductile iron, the inside color is a layer of concrete.