COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS MODELLING OF IRON FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER IN THE IRON BLAST FURNACE HEAR.pdf

Second International Conference on CFD in the Minerals and Process Industries CSIRO, Melbourne, Australia 6-8 December 1999 399 COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS MODELLING OF IRON FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER IN THE IRON BLAST FURNACE HEARTH Vladimir PANJKOVIC1 and John TRUELOVE2 1 formerly: Steel Research Laboratories, BHP Steel, PO Box 202, Port Kembla NSW 2505, AUSTRALIA now: BHP Information Technology, Level 32, 600 Bourke St., Melbourne VIC 3000, AUSTRALIA 2 Centre for Metallurgy and Resource Processing, BHP Minerals, PO BOX 188, Wallsend NSW 2287, AUSTRALIA ABSTRACT The erosion of hearth refractories significantly limits the life of a blast furnace. The design of control strategies for refractory wear reduction is facilitated by the use of computational modelling, which, in this case, provides an attractive tool for understanding the fluid flow and heat transfer conditions within the hearth. A computational fluid dynamics model of the iron flow and heat transfer in the hearth has been developed using the commercial package CFX 4.2. It calculates the iron flow pattern and the temperature profiles in the liquid iron and the hearth refractories, which is essential for estimation of wear rate under various operational regimes. The model has been extensively evaluated using thermocouple measurements from the hearth of BHP’s Port Kembla No. 5 Blast Furnace, and the agreement between the measured and calculated data is satisfactory. The model is now actively used for analysis of hearth conditions. NOMENCLATURE Ck constant in turbulent viscosity formula (=1.224) Clm constant in turbulent viscosity formula (=0.0413) Cμ constant in turbulent viscosity formula (=0.09) Cp heat capacity d coke diameter g gravitational constant H enthalpy p pressure Re Reynolds number Su resistance to flow through porous medium T temperature u interstitial velocity β coefficient of volumetric thermal expansion ε porosity λ thermal conductivity μeff effective viscosity μL laminar viscosity μT turbulen