Melting characteristics of multipiece steel scrap in liquid steel

Abstract

Based on the analysis of single-bar melting experiments in a previous article,1) the effect of spacing between the steel bars on the agglomeration of steel shells around the steel bars and the melting rate of steel scrap samples was studied in this article. In addition, a calculation model of melting time of steel scrap in the electric arc furnace under different bulk densities and random stacking conditions was also established. The two-bar melting experimental results show that the thermal simulation results are basically consistent with the numerical simulation results. And an increase in the spacing between the steel bars up to 6 mm and the preheating temperature of the steel scrap samples up to 1 073 K, can greatly reduce or eliminate the adverse effect of the agglomeration of steel shells around the steel bars on the melting process, thus greatly reducing the melting time. The multibar melting experimental results show that an increase in the porosity is beneficial to the melting of steel scrap samples, and when the porosity reached 0.84 and above, the melting time of multibar samples is close to that of an individual steel bar. In addition, the calculation model can accurately predict the melting time of the steel scrap in the electric arc furnace.