A mathematical model to study liquid inclusion behavior at the steel-slag interface

Abstract

The separation of non-metallic inclusions at the interface between the steel and the slag in the ladle, tundish and mold is an essential part of the production of clean steel. It is therefore, of great importance to have a deep understanding of the phenomena controlling the transfer of inclusions from the steel to the slag layer. In this work a mathematical model, derived from the equation of particle motion, have been used to study the transfer of liquid inclusions to slags. The effects of the drag, added mass, buoyancy and rebound force on the inclusion transfer are considered. The model relies, to a great extent, on the availability of accurate information of the magnitude of a number of physical properties of the involved phases. Among those properties, the interfacial tension between the phases and the slag viscosity were found to be the most critical. Due to the fact that the availability of experimentally obtained high-temperature physical property data, relevant to the industrial conditions, is scarce in the literature several different model descriptions have been used in this work to estimate these properties. The mathematical model has been used to investigate the separation of liquid non-metallic inclusions, of different size and composition, to a number of different industrial ladle slag compositions. © 2005 ISIJ.