The Numerical Prediction of the Titanium Carbide Distribution in the Blast Furnace During Tapping Process: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

To prolong the campaign life of the furnace hearth for high demand in the steel market, the theme of preventing the hearth wall from erosion phenomenon is worthily studied for steel industry. The titanium carbide (TiC) concentration distributions in the blast furnace hearth can be used to suppress the erosion phenomenon of the hearth wall. In this work, we solve the momentum and the thermal-energy-balance equations, as well as the mass transfer equation with chemical reaction effects to investigate the TiC concentration profiles in the hearth of Port Kembla no. 5 blast furnace (PKBF5) by means of a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package, Fluent (version 6.2). As shown in the results, the elephant foot erosion and pot-like erosion in the hearth may be restrained based on the calculated TiC concentration distributions. Additionally, this work illustrates that deadman type may be inferred based on the calculated TiC concentration profiles when the blast furnace is revamped.