Investigation of the Thermally Thick Alternative Reducing Agent Behavior in the Raceway Zone

Abstract

Alternative reducing agents (ARAs) injected into the raceway zone of the blast furnace have diameters in the range of tens to thousands of micrometers. Larger ARA particles can develop significant internal temperature and species concentration gradients. These gradients determine the thermochemical ARA conversion characteristics. To capture these effects, a resolved Lagrangian particle model was developed, which solves mass and energy transport equations on a 1D grid. The influence of the resolved model on the conversion characteristics in the raceway zone is compared to classical unresolved or 0D Lagrangian models using computational fluid dynamics simulations in OpenFOAM ® .