Numerical Modeling of Open-Eye Formation and Mixing Time in Argon Stirred Industrial Ladle

In secondary metallurgy, argon gas stirring and alloying of elements are very important in determining the quality of steel. Argon gas is injected through the nozzle located at the bottom of the ladle into the molten steel bath; this gas breaks up into gas bubbles, rising upwards and breaking the slag layer at high gas flow rates, creating an open-eye. Alloy elements are added to the molten steel through the open-eye to attain the desired steel composition. In this work, experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of argon gas flow rate on the open-eye size and mixing time. An Eulerian volume of fluid (VOF) approach was employed to simulate the argon/steel/slag interface in the ladle, while a species transport model was used to calculate the mixing time of the nickel alloy. The simulation results showed that the time-averaged value of the open-eye area changed from 0.66 to 2.36 m(2) when the flow rate of argon was varied from 100 to 500 NL/min. The mixing time (95% criterion) of tracer addition into the metal bath decreased from 139 s to 96 s, when the argon flow rate was increased from 100 to 500 NL/min. The model validation was verified by comparing with measured experimental results.