Numerical modelling of the transport and removal of inclusions in an industrial gas-stirred ladle

Abstract

A full-scale, three-dimensional, transient CFD modelling approach capable of predicting the threephase fluid flow characteristics and the inclusion removal in a gas-stirred ladle was developed. The comparison with experimental data indicates that this model can accurately predict the multiphase fluid flow and slag eye behaviour. The transport and removal of the inclusions in the gas-stirred ladle were predicted by tracing the movement of individual inclusions through computing their particle trajectories and considering a fluctuant top slag layer. The effects of inclusion size, gas flow rates, and injected bubble diameters as well as various removal mechanisms including slag capture, bubble attachment, and ladle wall adhesion on the removal of inclusions were investigated. It is shown that the slag capture is the prevailing mechanism for inclusion removal and the gas flow rate is the most important parameter for enhancing the inclusion removal efficiency.

Numerical simulation on inclusion removal behaviours in refining processes of spring steel

“…The ladle contains three continuous phases: argon, steel liquid, and slag phase, and a discrete phase tracked by the Lagrangian method, namely nonmetallic inclusions. The calculation parameters [16][17][18][19][20] are shown in Table 2. The calculation procedure is to first calculate the steel-slag-gas three-phase flow with the time step set as 0.005 s until the flow field is stable, and then add the inclusion discrete phase on this basis to continue to calculate the movement of inclusions in the ladle and the floating removal rate.…”

Resolving Gas Bubbles Ascending in Liquid Metal from Low-SNR Neutron Radiography Images

“…Such systems are usually rectangular vessels filled with gallium [1,8,43] or an eutectic gallium-indium-tin alloy [28,29,36,44,46] where bubbles are introduced via horizontal [8,43] or vertical [1,28,29,44,46] nozzles at the bottom of the vessel, or topsubmerged vertical [36] nozzles. Bubble chain flow systems are the next logical step from single-bubble flow investigations, since single-bubble flow, while very informative of the bubble wake flow dynamics and characteristic trajectories without and with applied MF, is not representative of the actual flow conditions typical for the above mentioned industrial processes where one has columns and swarms with a high number density of deformable bubbles [47][48][49][50].…”

Bubble Formation by Short Plunging Jet in a Continuous Casting Tundish

“…Inert gas bubbling [1][2][3][4] has been regarded as an effective method for deep cleaning liquid steel in continuous casting. Inclusions smaller than 50 µm can be attached to bubble surfaces [5,6] or captured by bubble wakes [7,8], thereby moving upward with floating bubbles.…”