Gas injection is a common practice in metallurgical industries. In this process, the material in a container is stirred by injecting an inert gas from the bottom. In steelmaking ladles, gas stirring is used, for example, to enhance reaction rates and to eliminate thermal or composition gradients. In general, there are two basic formulations for studying flows arisen from the injection of a gas phase into a liquid phase: the Eulerian- Eulerian approach and the Eulerian-Lagrangian approach. In the present work the Eulerian- Eulerian framework is adopted to simulate the main hydrodynamic features of the bubbly flow generated in a gas stirred ladle. On the other hand, in the process of inclusion removal, it is vital to have an accurate estimation of the dispersed phase. For this reason, a one-way Lagrangian particle tracking method is used to study the behavior of dispersed particles. Velocity and trajectory of particles are obtained by tracking some individual particles through the flow field. The aim of this study is to develop a three- dimensional mathematical model for predicting the transient behavior of flow field in the steelmaking ladle during a refining gas stirring process. In this work the effects of the position of nuzzle and the number of nuzzle on the quality of the developed flow field for two distinct geometrical models is studied. Two models are compared in terms of flow pattern, the strength of circulation, dead zones and the ability to distribute the additive particles. The results show that for a given gas flow rate, the LF with only one injection nozzle is more efficient than the other model with two nozzles. Also we performed a wide investigation on the role of inter-phase forces. Comparison of results indicates that although considering non-drag forces can lead to a more accurate simulation, in case of injecting a high volume fraction of small size bubbles; they have only a little effect on the results. Key Words Multiphase, Ladle Furnace, Gas injection, Eulerian-Eulerian, Eulerian-Lagrangian, Ansys-CFX, Particle Tracking.
