Numerical Modelling of Temperature Distribution and Pressure Drop through the Layered Burden Loading in a Blast Furnace

Analysis of the internal state of the blast furnace is necessary to predict and to control the operating conditions. Especially, it is important to develop models of the blast furnace to predict the cohesive zone because shape of the cohesive zone influences overall operating conditions of blast furnace such as gas flow, chemical reactions and temperature. Because many previous blast furnace models have assumed cohesive zone to be fixed, it was not possible to evaluate the shape change of cohesive zone in relation with operating conditions such as PCR, blast condition, and production rate. In this study, an axi-symmetric 2-dimensional steady state model is proposed to simulate blast furnace processes. In this model, cohesive zone is determined by the solid temperature. Finite volume method is employed for numerical simulation. To find location of the cohesive zone, entire calculation procedure is iterated until converged. Through this approach, shape of the cohesive zone, velocity and temperature within the furnace are predicted from the model.