Fluid flows in metallurgy—Friend or foe?

Abstract

Fluid flows are an integral part of many metallurgical processing operations. They affect the viability, effectiveness, and efficiency of many reactors, be they physical or chemical, in nature. The performance characteristics of blast furnaces, steelmaking vessels, ladles, tundishes, and the molds of continuous casting machines are all strongly influenced by such flows of fluids. Similarly, the question of liquid metal quality, and cast microstructures, is bound up with the way fluids have flowed and interacted. In all these aspects, the evolution in our techniques and abilities to model single- and multiphase flows and their attendant heat- and mass-transfer processes has contributed significantly to our understanding, and ability, to control these processes, to design improvements, and to develop new processes. To be ignorant of such matters can doom a processing operation to the scrap heap of metallurgical failures. This article reviews some of the more important aspects of flows in metallurgical reactor systems associated with steel and aluminum processing, by way of a series of typical examples.