A Computational Fluid Dynamics Study on Physical Refining of Steel Melts by Filtration

Abstract

In this paper, a previous experimental investigation on physical refining of steel melts by filtration was numerically studied. To be specific, the filtration of non-metallic alumina inclusions, in the size range of 1–100 µm, was stimulated from steel melt using a square-celled monolithic alumina filter. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) studies, including simulations of both fluid flow and particle tracing using the one-way coupling method, were conducted. The CFD predicted results for particles in the size range of ≤5 µm were compared to the published experimental data. The modeled filtration setup could capture 100% of the particles larger than 50 µm. The percentage of the filtered particles decreased from 98% to 0% in the particle size range from 50 µm to 1 µm.

Keywords

• steel refining
• steel filtration
• alumina filters
• ceramic filters