Numerical Analysis of Flow Behavior Inside the Blast Furnace

Gas and burden distributions inside a blast furnace play an important role in optimizing gas utilization versus the furnace productivity and minimizing the CO2 emission in steel industries. In this paper, a mathematical model is presented to describe the burden descent in the blast furnace shaft and gas distribution, with the alternative structure of coke and ore layers being considered. Multi-dimensional Ergun’s equation is solved with considering the turbulent compressible gas flow through the burden column. The porosity of each material will be treated as a function of three dimensional functions which will be determined by the kinetics sub-models accordingly. A detailed investigation of gas flow through the blast furnace will be conducted with the given initial burden profiles along with the effects of redistribution during burden descending. Also, parametric studies will be carried out to analyze the gas distribution cross the blast furnace under different cohesive zone (CZ) shapes, charging rate, and furnace top pressure. A good agreement was obtained between the CFD simulation and published experimental data. Based on the results, the inverse V shape is proved to be the most desirable CZ profile.