COLD MODEL EXPERIMENTS ON THE ENHANCEMENT OF SCRAP MELTING IN A BATH ACCOMPANIED BY GAS INJECTION

A fundamental study based upon an aqueous system was carried out to re veal the effect of gas injection on the melting rate of solid bodies s uch as scrap. Ice spheres and ice cylinders were used as models of sol id metals for the aqueous system. As the first step, the melting behav ior of a single ice sphere or cylinder in a water bath was observed in this study using a high-speed video camera and by eye inspection. The melting rate of the ice was highly increased with an increase in gas flow rate. An estimation method of the melting time of the ice was pro posed. Measured values of the melting time were found to compare well with estimated ones. The estimation method of the melting time origina lly proposed for the aqueous system was applicable to Wood's metal sys tems by adding time required for a solid Wood's metal sphere or cylind er to be heated up to its melting point.