Physical and Mathematical Modeling of Metal-Slag Exchanges in Gas-Stirred Ladles
- PDF / 566,779 Bytes
- 9 Pages / 432 x 648 pts Page_size
- 52 Downloads / 178 Views
MRS Advances © 2017 Materials Research Society DOI: 10.1557/adv.2017.607
PHYSICAL AND MATHEMATICAL MODELING OF METAL-SLAG EXCHANGES IN GASSTIRRED LADLES Luis E. Jardón-Pérez1, A. López-Gutierrez1, Alfredo Vazquez1, C. González-Rivera1, M. A. Ramirez-Argaez1 1
Facultad de Química, UNAM; Avenida Universidad 3000, Ciudad Universitaria, C.P. 04510, Coyoacán, Cd. México, México.
ABSTRACT
Ladle refining plays a key role in achieving the quality of the steel since in this reactor temperature and chemical composition is adjusted, elimination of non-metallic inclusions is performed, and also deoxidation and desulphurization are operations taking place in the refining process. Specifically, the metal-slag mass exchanges have not received much attention through scientific studies. In this work, a rigorous study on the mass exchange between metal and slag is presented through a scaled water physical model. In the model, thymol (playing the role of a solute such as sulfur) is added to the water (playing the role of steel) and silicon oil (playing the role of slag) picks up the thymol, while the ladle is agitated with the central injection of gas. The evolution of thymol concentration in time was measured. Also, a mathematical model was developed and cast into the commercial CFD code Fluent Ansys to represent the fluid flow phenomena and the mass transfer through the solution of the continuity equation, the turbulent momentum conservation equations and the species mass conservation equation. There is a good agreement between the measured and the computed results regarding the thymol concentration evolution in water and consequently the mathematical model was validated regarding the mass species metal-slag exchanges and it may be used to study metal-slag exchanges in the steel ladle such as deoxidation or desulphurization.
INTRODUCTION Ladle steelmaking plays a key role to produce high-quality steel grades. However, the opacity of liquid steel during operation makes plant trials difficult to perform. Therefore, process engineering through mathematical models is an excellent tool to understand, to control, and to optimize the process. Several mathematical models have been used to investigate the flow and mixing phenomena in gas-stirred ladle systems. These models were classified into three types: Quasi-single or pseudo-single phase models, Lagrangian-Eulerian two-phase models (Lagrangian) and Eulerian-Eulerian two-phase models (Eulerian). Detailed reviews of related simulations and model studies can be found in the literature [1–3]. The presence of the top slag layer involves a three-phase system (liquid steel/liquid slag/gas). A recent review of advances in the modeling of this kind of 3821
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSB Libraries, on 07 Mar 2018 at 19:32:25, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1557/adv.2017.607
systems can be found in [4, 5]. Mendez et al. [1] analysed in detail the effects of drag and n
Data Loading...
