Physical study of the impact of injector design on mixing, convection and turbulence in ladle metallurgy

Abstract

Mixing time is a common measure to evaluate the efficiency of homogenization in ladle metallurgy. In this study, a 1:3 scale water model of a 185 t industrial gas-stirred ladle with an eccentric porous plug at the bottom is used to study the impact of different injector designs on mixing at a constant flow rate of 16.7 slm (standard liter per minute) at the pressure of 2 bar and filling height of 1.076 m. For that, the mixing time is measured with a continuous food color injection, accompanied by Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) to correlate the results with the bulk convection and the turbulent kinetic energy. The results show that all tested injectors yield similar mixing times with a relative deviation of 6.4%. It is therefore concluded that the injector design plays a minor role in the optimization of ladle metallurgy. Keywords: Bulk convection, Injector design, Ladle metallurgy, Mixing time, Turbulent kinetic energy