MATHEMATICAL-MODELING TOOLS FOR THE OPTIMIZATION OF DIRECT SMELTING PROCESSES

Direct smelting operations involve the strong interaction of a wide ra nge of complex physico-chemical processes. Moreover, for such processe s to be efficient, these interactions have to be optimised to yield th e desired set of chemical reactions and exchanges of heat and mass amo ngst the variety of gaseous, liquid and solid phases. This paper focus es upon a consideration of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based mo dels developed to represent the HIsmelt(R) direct smelting process. Th e models are extremely sophisticated and at every stage have challenge d the limits of CFD technology, as well as the adequacy of constitutiv e sub-models to represent the chemical reaction/combustion phenomena. From an unprecedented synergy amongst process metallurgists, experimen tal scientists and CFD modellers, sophisticated, comprehensive and wel l-validated models of the process have evolved. The paper highlights s ome of the key state-of-the-art CFD techniques developed for the model s and the role of specially designed experiments in parameter estimati on and validation against plant measurements. (C) 1998 Elsevier Scienc e Inc. All rights reserved.