3-D Computational Fluid Dynamic Analysis of Bustle Gas Combustion in a Direct Reduced Iron Plant

Gases from a natural gas reformer are used to reduce iron oxides to iron in the direct reduced iron (DRI) plant. The reducing gases consist of mainly hydrogen and carbon monoxide and traces of methane, water vapor, carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Part of this gas mixture is burned to heat the gases to 1000°C (1832°F) by the injection of pure oxygen through an Inconel nozzle. The oxygen nozzle fails frequently, mainly due to the high temperature reactions. This paper aims to study the reactions that contribute to the high temperature for different oxygen flow rates and thus optimize the flow rates to prevent failure of the nozzle using a three dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model.