Abstract
A water model was adopted to physically simulate the bottom gas stirring inside an ironmaking smelter. The water model experiments were conducted to investigate the erosion of the bottom refractory lining near the tuyere tip under different gas bottom blowing conditions. In experiments, the major parameters are the gas flow rate, and the inside diameter and placement of bottom blowing tuyeres.
The purpose of this study is to provide a design and operation reference of the gas bottom blowing system for CSC’s Ironmaking Smelter. A transparent acrylic water model, which is 60% of the actual furnace’s size, is used to study the erosion of the bottom refractory lining near the tuyere tips. The experiments suggested that the erosion rate of specimens near the tuyere tips reduced with a decrease in the gas flow rate. In the case of the triangle-corners-center placement of four bottom blowing tuyeres, the lowest erosion rate of boric acid specimens was found at a 15 mm tuyere size. In the case of the square-corners placement of four bottom blowing tuyeres, the lowest erosion rate of boric acid specimens was found at a 10 mm tuyere size. With the same blowing conditions, the erosion rate appears to decrease with a decrease in tuyere numbers. It was shown that the erosion rate of the square-corners placement case was lower than that of the triangle-corners-center at the same bottom blowing condition. The results imply that the conditions for the lowest erosion rate of specimens is a bottom blowing gas flow rate for each tuyere of 80 L/min, a tuyere inner diameter of 15.0 mm and three bottom blowing tuyeres, all of which should be in the range of the experimental parameters described above.
