Abstract
With the demand of high-quality steel and miniaturization of the special steel production, single snorkel vacuum refining process has been widely concerned in China recently, because of its simple structure and good performance of degassing and decarburization. In this study, a water model experimental system and a three-dimensional mathematical model based on two-fluid multiphase flow model have been built to analyze the refining efficiency limitation of the single snorkel vacuum refining furnace from the flow pattern and gas distribution. The results showed that there is a limited gas flow rate, and beyond this flow rate the gas column deviates to the wall and the redundant bubbles escape from the free surface, which will not further improve the refining efficiency and will lead to the erosion of the snorkel. In this case, the limited flow rate is 900 NL/h. Furthermore, the fluctuation of the free surface and the different structural parameters have significant effects on the flow field in single-snorkel vacuum refining furnace (SSF).
Highlights
With uninterruptedly increasing demand for highly clean steel, vacuum processes have been applied widely and developed rapidly in the steelmaking process
This study proposed a numerical model based on the Euler-Euler multiphase modeling framework
It can be seen that with the increase of gas blowing flow rate, the amplitude of fluctuation become larger, and the trajectory of bubbles move to the wall, and some bubbles flow away from the gap between ladle and snorkel at largest gas blowing flow rate
Summary
With uninterruptedly increasing demand for highly clean steel, vacuum processes have been applied widely and developed rapidly in the steelmaking process. In China, with the ever-increasing demand of the miniaturization of special steel production, the single snorkel vacuum refining process, which is similar to the RH process, has attracted much attention owing to its simple structure, superior performance of degassing, and decarburization processes. Driven mainly by the buoyancy force, the dispersed argon gas bubbles flow vertically through the molten steel and enter into the vacuum chamber.
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