Experimental study of splash generation in a flash smelting furnace
- PDF / 1,671,209 Bytes
- 14 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 18 Downloads / 200 Views
I.
INTRODUCTION
SPLASH is formed when gases are injected into melts for gas-liquid reactions. The gas must be introduced into the melt in such a manner so as to optimize the process conditions and achieve the process objectives. Merely injecting the gas into the liquid is not enough. It is necessary to ensure that its negative consequences are minimized and its positive attributes are maximized. In addition to splashing, the formation of slop, entrainment, and gas distribution are all vital parts of the process dynamics. Although interfacial phenomena are the common threads between these physical processes, they have not received much attention because designers and operators have opted for the simplicity of global approximations by correlations or heuristics, leaving the fundamental understanding largely untouched. This is detrimental to new processes, particularly the high intensity smelting processes, in that such simple methods neither scale easily nor provide an understanding of the basic mechanism which allows the utilization of the governing interracial phenomena for optimization and successful operation. In recent years,r1.2.31the interest in the study of the fundamentals of splash formation has been rekindled with the advent of new processes wherein splash must either be minimized (such as the top submerged gas injection processes) or be judiciously utilized for heat/mass transfer and chem-
LIOW JONG-LENG, Research Fellow, and NEIL B. GRAY, Associate Professor, are with the G.K. Williams Cooperative Research Centre for Extractive Metallurgy, Department of Chemical Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Australia. Manuscript submitted August 24, 1994. METALLURGICAL AND MATERIALS TRANSACTIONS B
ical reaction (the Hlsmelt process). Currently, in metallurgical vessels that use high pressure and high velocity oxygen blast such as the Q-BOP and AOD converters, a substantial amount of splash is generated which causes the formation of both accretions and substantial amounts of fines which need to be disposed of or recycled. Little is known on how to control the size and amount of the splash that is generated. An ideal solution would be to generate splash that is large enough to fall back into the melt and avoid the generation of fines. This article brings together observations of splashing from an industrial top submerged injection process and preliminary analysis to provide a starting point for further work into the complex phenomena of splash formation. Splash is often confined in its description to the breakup of liquids or melts when they are accelerated into a gas field. It is formed when gas bubbles through a melt and escapes at the liquid-gas interface. The formation of splash droplets depends on the physical forces governing gas disengagement from the liquid. The early visual and photographic observations of Worthingtont4] showed the formation of splash from liquid drops impinging both on a liquid and a solid surface. Since then, the impact of liquid drops on a liquid surface has bee
Data Loading...
