Analysis of the Effect of Gas Injection System on the Heating Rate of a Gas Stirred Steel Ladle Assisted by Physical Modeling and PIV-PLIF Measurements

Abstract

In this work, the Planar Laser-Induced Fluorescence (PLIF) technique is applied to study the effect of the number of nozzles, their radial position and the gas flow rate on the thermal mixing during the secondary steel refining under non-isothermal conditions in a water model. In the physical model, three burners have been used to simulate the arc heating during the liquid metal processing.The results suggest that an increase in the gas flow rate and injection nozzles located at the bottom of the model, in the same radial and angular positions as the heat sources affecting the liquid surface, improve the system’s heating efficiency.The use of PLIF proved to be a relevant tool to analyze the heat transfer phenomena and increase the thermal performance of the ladle, opening the possibility of carrying out experiments in non-isothermal physical models of steelmaking reactors, which are currently scarce.