Simulation on Flow Field and Mixing Phenomenon in Single Snorkel Vacuum Degasser

Abstract

Numerical simulation method has been used to investigate the flow field and mixing phenomenon in single snorkel degasser with ladle bottom blowing. The numerical results showed that the flow field inside the single snorkel vacuum degasser can be optimized in order to achieve higher recirculation rates and smaller mixing times, which are important to refining. This can be done by locating the gas injection point away from the center of the ladle. Under the conditions analyzed in present work, the optimum location of the gas injection point could be located 0.3 m from the center of the ladle. The circulation flow rate twice as high as that of a similar size RH degasser can be achieved on the condition of the optimized position. However, the ladle bottom blowing gas flow rate should be kept to a maximum of 400 NL/min in order to avoid slag entrapment in present work.

Physical Simulation on Molten Steel Flow Characteristics of RH Vacuum Chamber with Arched Snorkels

“…From equipment improvement view, many investigations have proved that a larger snorkel sectional area [24,26,29,38]blowing from the bottom of the vacuum chamber [15] or ladle [39] would favor to optimize the fluid flow of RH. Recently, many researchers have tried to increase the refining efficiency by using single-leg [12,28,31,40], multilegs [38,41], and magnetic field [42] imposed around the up-leg. However, the single-leg was hardly used in the actual industrial manufacture considering technical immaturity; meanwhile, multilegs and imposing magnetic field around snorkel were also hardly used in the actual industrial manufacture considering the cost issue.…”