Splash Distribution in Oxygen Steelmaking

The study of splashing is important in understanding oxygen steelmaking. Splashing creates large interfacial area between reacting surfaces and thereby directly affects the kinetics of steelmaking reactions. In the present cold modeling work, a study of splashing has been carried out for various lance heights and gas flow rates. Sampling of droplets has been done in both radial positions and vertical positions across the bath to investigate the effect of sampling positions in estimation of the droplet generation rate. A novel approach has been developed to estimate the droplet generation rate. The results of the study have been compared with previous investigations. Results show that positioning of sampling is a critical issue and can affect the estimation of droplets present in the emulsion. This study also demonstrates quantitatively how much the droplet generation rate is reduced when the cavity mode changes from splashing to penetrating for different Blowing numbers. (C) The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society and ASM International 2014