Modeling and Simulation of Technological Processes for Producing and Refining Steel

Abstract

The production of metals with required chemical composition in steelmaking plants is a very difficult problem, because it is associated with the occurrence of complex physicochemical processes. The greatest contribution to shaping the composition of the products of a melting process is made by the chemical reactions that occur on the various phase boundaries in the metal–slag–gas system. A comprehensive study of their laws is needed to perfect existing technological processes, to develop new technological processes, and to introduce them into practice. Prediction of the chemical composition of the metal and the slag based on mathematical modeling of the phase interaction not only opens up additional routes for improving the economic parameters of technological processes, but also allows their optimization in the design stage. Kinetic analysis methods that are known and that we developed, thermodynamic and kinetic parameters that have been obtained, and data concerning the mechanism of individual steps of heterogeneous reactions were used to create mathematical models that enabled us to predict the composition and mass of the phases for different variants of metal production and refinement processes.