Numerical Methods for Simulating the Reduction of Iron Ore in Blast Furnace Shaft

The blast furnace process is a counter-current moving bed chemical reactor to reduce iron oxides to iron, which involves complex transport phenomena and chemical reactions. The iron ore and coke are alternatively charged into the blast furnace, forming a layer by layer structural burden which is slowly descending in the counter-current direction of the ascending gas flow. A new methodology was proposed to efficiently simulate the gas and solid burden flow in the counter-current moving bed in blast furnace shaft. The gas dynamics, burden movement, chemical reactions, heat and mass transfer between the gas phase and solid phase are included. The new methodology has been developed to explicitly consider the effects of the layer thickness thermally and chemically in the CFD model.