Abstract

In ladle metallurgy, gas stirring and behavior of the slag layer are very important for the quality of the steel. When gas is injected through a nozzle located at the bottom of the ladle into the metal bath, the gas jet exiting the nozzle breaks up into gas bubbles. The rising bubbles break the slag layer and create a slag eye. In this paper, the behavior of the slag eye area for different gas flow rates is been investigated through experimental measurements and CFD simulations. A 1/5-scale water model of 150 ton-ladle was deployed for the experimental measurements and for studying the effect of gas flow rate on the slag eye diameter. The physical modelling results show that the slag eye area changes from 20 to 182 cm² when the gas flow rate increases from 1.5 to 15 NL/min. The dimensionless area of the open eye was found to be in agreement with earlier studies. The simulations were carried out in the commercial CFD code ANSYS Fluent with mesh generation in ANSYS Workbench. The numerical model developed is based on the Eulerian Multiphase Volume of Fluid (VOF) approach and employs standard 𝑘 − 𝜀 turbulence model for solving the turbulent liquid flow induced by bubble-liquid interaction. The simulation results of slag eye area showed a good agreement when compared to experimental results measured.