Steel ladles are lined with a variety of refractories including shaped and unshaped, basic and non-basic materials. In many cases magnesia carbon bricks are applied to the slag area as they show an excellent corrosion resistance. The disadvantage of magnesia carbon refractories is their limited oxidation resistance. Steel ladles need to be preheated to avoid thermal shock damage to the refractory lining. During preheating up to the temperature of 1000 °C a considerable oxygen content in the exhaust gas favors carbon burnout in MgO-C refractories at elevated temperatures and thereby, negatively influences their initial corrosion and erosion resistance. The aim of this thesis was to analyze the impact of steel ladle preheating on possible decarburization of MgO-C refractories. This was done by establishing a kinetic model for carbon burnout in MgO-C refractories and experimentally evaluating it at laboratory scale. Further, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of ladle preheating was executed to obtain the necessary process data. With the help of the proposed kinetic model and applying simulated process data the decarburization depth in MgO-C refractory during ladle preheating was calculated for various material types.