A Simulation Study of Particles Generated from Pellet Wear Contacts during a Laboratory Test

Abstract

In the blast furnace process, material losses occur due to mechanical wear between charged iron ore pellets and are exhausted in the form of dust in the off-gases. A redesigned tribometer combined with a ventilation chamber was developed to identify the dust emission from the mechanical wear contact of pellets. In order to obtain a better understanding of the measurement results, a coupled drift flux with a unified Eulerian deposition model was adopted to investigate particle dispersion and deposition during tests. Two influential factors, namely the air condition (5–20 L/min) and particle size (1–20 µm) were examined. The predicted results were presented by introducing two parameters, namely the measurable fraction and the deposition fraction. For each air condition, the measurable fraction declines while the deposition fraction rises as particle size grows. The critical size of the particles that becomes airborne and captured at the outlet was identified to be around 20 µm. In addition, a high airflow rate supplied at the inlet was observed to be favorable for improving the measurable fraction. Nevertheless, the results show that nearly 50% of emitted particles (1–20 µm) that failed to be captured during tests. Thus it could be expected that these generated particles would be transported deeply in a blast furnace if they are not efficiently removed from the off-gas. As a consequence, they may influence the quality of the products. Furthermore, the validation of the simulation results against the experimental data was achieved by using the predicted measurable fraction.