Dissolution of carbon in liquid iron melt is one of the very important reactions in chemical and metal processing industries, as it decides, in many cases, the productivity of a process or quality of the product. As a result, the current investigation was undertaken to study the effect of different physical and chemical characteristics of five types of carbon sources on dissolution kinetics. Bath chemistry being a very important factor in determining the process, two types of iron bearing materials, namely, electrolytic iron and sponge iron were employed for the study. It has been found that though the ash in carbon exhibits significant effect on carbon dissolution, the influence of the volatile matter was not found to be noteworthy. It has also been observed that petroleum coke undergoes maximum dissolution possibly due to its porous structure as well as less amount of inherent impurity. Silicon is found to be a strong promoter of the kinetics whereas the depressing effect of sulphur is not found to be that pronounced. Preliminary results of a mathematical model shows that the dissolution in Tamman furnace takes place under constant heat flux condition. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.