Investigation of the Effects of Bubble Initial Diameter and Gas Flow Rate on the Performance of a Steel Ladle with Bottom Plug
(Room 205B)
09 May 17
11:00 AM
-
11:30 AM
Tracks:
Ladle Furnace Technologies & Processes
Stirring of liquid metal with inert gas through stir plugs in the bottom of the ladle is widely implemented at ladle treatment stations. To ensure high-quality steel is produced, a range of stirring conditions, from hard stirring for mixing and sulfur removal, to gentle stirring for inclusion removal, is required. In this paper, a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique was used to study the flow pattern inside the ladle and to investigate optimal mixing conditions. Multi-phase flow characteristics were simulated using the volume-of-fluid (VOF)-Lagrangian method, where the VOF method was used to track the liquid iron and liquid slag and the Lagrangian method was used to track the argon bubbles. When comparing the slag eye size obtained in real plant conditions with CFD simulation, good agreement has been observed.