ISIJ International
Online ISSN : 1347-5460
Print ISSN : 0915-1559
ISSN-L : 0915-1559
Ironmaking
Importance of the Penetration Depth and Mixing in the IRONARC Process
Kristofer Bölke Mikael ErssonMatej ImrisPär Göran Jönsson
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2018 Volume 58 Issue 7 Pages 1210-1217

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Abstract

One of the most important parameters for gas injection into liquid baths is the penetration depth of the gas into the bath. This is due to that it strongly influences the flow structure and hence the stirring and plume behavior in metallurgical processes.

The IRONARC process is a new energy efficient process for reduction of iron oxide to produce pig iron. The future goal is to continuously scale up the process to an industrial scale from the current pilot scale. In this process, gas is injected horizontally through a submerged nozzle into a slag bath. Hence, the penetration depth is of great importance since it greatly affect several parameters in this process. Moreover, this information is essential when scaling up the reactor from a pilot scale to an industrial scale.

In this work, the penetration depth of gas injection into water in a small scale side blown converter was studied numerically. Two different approaches with different multiphase models were tested, namely the Volume of Fluid (VOF) model and Eulerian multiphase model (EE). The penetration depth could be accurately determined for both numerical models, with a small expected deviation of 13.9% from the physical experiment results. Also, the simulation time was shorter for the Eulerian multiphase model. The penetration depth was then determined for the IRONARC pilot plant process. The results show that the plume is detached from the nozzle wall, which in turn results in a better energy usage of the gas along with a small refractory wear.

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© 2018 by The Iron and Steel Institute of Japan
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