Modeling Concept for Intensive Reacting Submerged Gas Injection a Case Study of a Peirce-Smith Converter

摘要

A mathematical modeling concept has been developed to simulate the reactive gas injection of a Peirce-Smith converter. The concept is capable of calculating the cross-sectional time-averaged flow and temperature field of gas and melt and the concentration field of gas composition with the aid of a commercial Computation Fluid Dynamic (CFD) solver. The concept is based on the two-fluid model in which heat, mass and momentum transfer coupling is carried out by combining the interfacial area concentration and the flow regime concepts. The present limitations of CFD were found to set many restrictions on formulating a completed analysis of the fluid dynamics of the studied reactor and CFD calculations were supplemented with physical and simplified heat and mass balance modeling. A CFD analysis was carried out for four separate short periods of time on a typical converter cycle. The modeling concept predicted that flow conditions may change considerable during a single converter cycle. Currently used tools, based on the input power of gas injection and non-dimensional groups, cannot predict this variation, even though the general trends of these correlations agree with the mathematical modeling concept.