Modelling and Optimization of Inert

Gas Shrouded Ladle Nozzle Practice

Submitted in the partial fulfilment of the requirements
for the degree of Master of Technology

By

S.Sethu Prasanth
Roll No. 183114004

Under the guidance of

Prof. N.N. Viswanathan
Prof.N.B.Ballal

MM 694
Steel Technology
Department of Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY BOMBAY
2019

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 Dissertation Approval Sheet

The dissertation entitled “Modelling and Optimisation of Argon Shrouding

Practice” submitted by S.Sethu Prasanth (Roll.No: 183114004) is approved for
the

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CHAPTER: 1 Introduction

1.1 Background and Motivation

Steel making through continuous casting has become a commonly used for solidification of
steel for the past few decades. Except for bigger size castings, continuous casting has almost
swapped Ingot casting all over the world. It offers wide range of advantages like better yield,
homogeneity, internal soundness and good Non Metallic Inclusion (NMI) cleanliness. During
the process of continuous casting, superior attention must be provided for the manufacturing
of products with high quality in terms of its internal and surface quality. Continuous cast
strands with inclusion defect require offline inspection techniques like Ultrasonic testing to
detect the NMI. Once the inclusion is found in the final product it can be either classified as
scrap or it can be sent to less stringent applications. Therefore, steel manufacturer always
aims to improve and optimise the steel making process to prevent NMI at the production
stage rather than at inspection stage.

Generally NMI forms as a result of chemical reactions, physical effects, slag, refractory etc.,
there are many process control steps followed in steel making section to improve NMI
flotation and absorption by the slag. After the process of deoxidation in steel making, steel is
preserved with most care to avoid reoxidation reaction to happen. Reoxidation reaction can
happen in ladle, transfer operations, tundish, metal transfer via shroud etc., Inert gases
injection in to the ladle shroud is a communal practice of many steelmakers around the world.
It prevents the reoxidation of ambient air by metal stream from ladle. Benefits obtained from
this practice are many like significant reduction of dissolved oxygen content, reduction in
submerged entry nozzle choking during casting, less number of NMI etc.,

However aspiration of ambient air through porous refractory, cracks, joints in to the nozzle
results in reoxidation which is an important source NMI and nozzle chocking. This argon in
steel forms a bubble flow causing a two phase gas-liquid plume that rises from the tundish
bottom towards the top due to buoyancy effects. A part of slag is pushed outwards radially
nearly in a circular shape called to be as tundish open eye, due to the rising plume as depicted
in Figure 1. This forms the potential sites for re- oxidation in a tundish. Optimization of
complex reactor like this to control re-oxidation at potential sites like collector nozzle to
shroud joint and at the tundish surface should be done to produce clean steel. For this to be
done, a proper selection of argon flow rate is necessary along with a better understanding of
gas-liquid dual phase flows in the shroud and tundish [].

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Tundish level, Casting speed and nozzle bore diameter plays a significant role in optimising
the shrouding process. G.M.Evans et al[]. found out that application for SENs, more injection
of gas results in a undesirable change from bubbly regime to churn-turbulent regime.
Therefore, it is necessary to have scientific understanding of gas shrouding process for
complete optimisation of process. Steel manufacturers prefer providing a known flow rate of
Argon gas to the shroud so that aspiration of air doesn’t happen inside the shroud.

Figure 1: Flow of gaseous Argon and liquid Steel in Ladle shroud and tundish during teeming

Doing experimental studies with different flow rates are quite expensive at plant scale.
Generally water modelling studies are done to optimize the process. One such water
modelling is done for Bloom caster-2 of JSW Steel, Salem works at IIT_Bombay. Soorya
Prakash et al., found the optimum flow rate to be given for compensating the negative
pressure which is creating inside the shroud-collector nozzle geometry. However the pressure
developing inside the assembly may not be same in real conditions. So flow needs to be
changed dynamically as per the pressure developing inside the system. Hence further
optimisation needs to be done based on the pressure so that it could be easy to adopt in
industrial conditions

1.2 Objective

The objective of this work is to study the

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CHAPTER: 2 Literature Review

2.1 Fluid Flow in steel making

Steel making involves refining of hot metal in furnaces & ladles, casting through continuous
casting to produce solidified products like blooms, slabs and billets. Efficiency of all the
operations like alloying and deoxidizer additions, inclusion float out , dissolution of alloying
elements and also the transfer operations extremely dependent on the state of fluid motion.
Flows in these metallurgical vessels are the result of different forces acting on it. In
continuous casting tundish, major driving forces are gravitational forces and thermal free
convection and intensity of agitation will also be in the range of tens of cm/s to a couple of
m/s. Multidimensional , multiphase and reacting turbulent flow phenomena are part of steel
making vessels. So process calculation and optimisation in steel making demands a priori
knowledge of flow. It is done generally from physical experiments and numerical
calculations

2.1.1 Conservation of Momentum, Navier-stokes equation and Boundary conditions

Flow of any fluid is an outcome of forces acting on fluid element. So, quantitative description
of flows starts from principle of conservation of momentum. Several types of forces act on
fluid element. Some of the forces act on the surface and some may work within the entire
body or volume of the elements. Force being a vector, three different components results for
a three dimensional flow. Equations can be interrelated via interphase exchange terms due to
interaction among various phases. Some of the frequently encountered forces in steelmaking
are inertial, pressure, viscous and gravitational forces. Also, under steelmaking conditions,
melt essentially follows as a Newtonian and as an incompressible liquid.

The term on the left side of the above equation is the rate of change of momentum per unit
volume. The four terms on the right side are the rate of momentum gain by convection per
unit volume, pressure force per unit volume, rate of momentum gain by viscous transfer per
unit volume, and body force per unit volume, respectively. Last equation is the popular
Navier Stokes equation.

Overall continuity and three momentum conservation equations represent Newtonian,

incompressible, 3-D and time dependent flow. They are principally solved with the a set of
suitable initial and boundary conditions. These conditions are required on each dependant
variable to complete the statement of fluid problem and generally they are defined on the

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basis of either velocity components or their gradients at the system boundaries. Numerous
types of boundary conditions exists such as free surface, wall, inlet and outlet are certainly
the most common types in steelmaking. For stationary solid walls, zero velocity is generally
imposed and for free surface zero velocity gradients is applied. These conditions are problem
specific and it varies from one situation to other.

2.2 Physical Modelling

In physical modelling, a full or reduced scale tundish model may be designed based on
appropriate similarity criteria in which the flow of molten metal is simulated by the flow of
water. Physical modelling using water at room temperature (due to kinematic viscosity
similarity with liquid steel at 1600°C) as a medium is finding widespread application for the
study of fluid flow in the tundish. To attain similarity between the prototype and model, the
following similitude criteria must be met.

2.2.1 Geometrical similarity

Actual and model vessel must be geometrically similar. Dimensions related to length must
bear a constant ratio between model and actual vessel. As shown in fig each should obey the
following relation

Where subscript m and p refer to the model and prototype

(actual) and λ is known as length scale factor

2.2.2 Kinematic similarity

The streamlines in one system are geometrically similar to

the streamlines in the other system. Time intervals between
the corresponding events should bear a constant ratio.

2.2.3 Dynamic similarity

This similarity deals with the forces which accelerates or retard the moving element in the
system. Forces acting on a corresponding time at a particular location in the model should
bear a fixed ratio with the forces in an actual tundish. If the following relationship hold good
at equivalent location and time in both the model as well as the industrial system, then the
dynamic similarity between the systems can be achieved.

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Ratio of inertial to viscous force and ratio of inertial to gravitational force leads to the
Reynolds number equivalence and Froude number equivalence

2.2.4 Thermal similarity

The dimensionless numbers involving heat transfers are equal in both systems. Thermal
similarity is not important when considering flow within a tundish since forced convection in
these regions is likely to be predominant.

Dimensionless groups are evaluated on the basis of a priori knowledge of velocity,

nozzle/orifice diameter etc., Prerequisite for achieving thermal similarity in systems is
achieving of dynamic as well as the kinematic similarity. It will be achieved if the heat
transfer rate in conduction, convection and radiation has a fixed ratio with rates of heat
transfer at the corresponding location in full scale prototype.

2.2.5 Chemical similarity

If concentration difference between model and prototype at the corresponding location as

well as time has a constant ratio then the system is said to be chemically similar.
Mathematical representation of above context can be depicted as

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Measurements of Water modelling

Currently it is not possible to visualise and measure velocity of molten steel in furnaces, mold
etc., as sustainable working of probes for such measurements are generally lacking. On the
other hand many types of flow measurement devices are applied to measure velocity and
turbulence characteristics in equivalent aqeous systems. These for example include Pitot tube,
Hot wire anemometer, Laser Doppler velocimeter(LDV), Particle Image Velocimetry(PIV),
Drag probe etc.,

Fluid flows inside the tundish and shroud systems can be visualized by means of 2D PIV
technique. It is basically an optical method for visualization of flows and to get instantaneous
measurements on velocity and fluid properties. PIV techniques provide particle movements in
terms of 2D or 3D vector fields. The fluid is dispersed with particles which are illuminated so
10as to make them visible. The particle movement is used to measure the speed and the flow
direction (velocity field) required

A plane near the shroud was scanned by 2D PIV to visualize flow fields. It was reported [4]
that before the initiation of gas flow, velocity vectors were found to point towards the shroud
forcing the fluid to drag the slag towards the shroud thereby covering it around

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However, reverse flows causing the slag to move away from the regions around the shroud
were reported after starting of gas flows and the severity of the same increased with increase
in gas flow rates [4] as shown in Figure

Measurement through Tracer Dispersion

Experiments with dispersion of tracer were performed to understand the flow pattern.
Tundish will be filled with water to a known height and steady state will be achieved. After
attaining steady stat, a known concentration if tracer (generally potassium chloride) will be
injected as a pulse to the inlet stream. The conductivity of the water will be measured at the
outlets of tundish continuously with the help of data acquisition card. Conductivity values of
individual strands will be converted to the corresponding concentrations. Dimensionless
concentrations will be plotted against dimensionless time to derive the characteristic C
curves. There will be variations in individual C curves of each strand