Heat Recovery Process from Packed Bed of Hot Slag Plates

Abstract

Reduction of CO₂ emissions from the steelmaking process is strongly required for prevention of global warming. One promising heat resource that is estimated to have great potential for energy saving is the waste heat of steelmaking slag, which has a temperature of above 1 673 K in the molten state. This molten slag can be solidified in a plate-like shape by feeding it on the surface of water-cooled rolls, and the heat of the plate-like slag can be recovered easily in spite of its low heat conductivity. When these hot slag plates are packed in a slag chamber, the heat of the slag can be recovered by heat exchange with a counter current gas flow. Because the efficiency of gas-slag heat transfer changes depending on the shape of the packed slag, it is difficult to estimate the efficiency of slag heat recovery without evaluating the accuracy of the heat transfer coefficient in the bed. In this work, the effect of the slag shape on the accuracy of the heat transfer equation was evaluated by conducting both laboratory-scale and pilot-scale slag heat recovery experiments and performing a fitting analysis by using a slag packed bed heat transfer simulation model. A comparison of the experimental results and calculation results confirmed that the heat transfer coefficient can be estimated by using Johnson-Rubesin’s equation modified by a correction factor in case the packed materials are plate-like. The effect of the correction factor on the efficiency of slag heat recovery at the industrial scale was also estimated.