Melting behavior of simulated DRI in liquid steel

The melting process of sponge iron in electric arc furnaces involves highly complex phenomena of fluid flow, heat and mass transfer in unsteady state conditions. Few attempts worldwide have been carried out to couple these phenomena to describe the melting kinetics. In this work, some preliminary results are presented coupling three models; an arc model for AC electric arcs, a bath model and a melting model. The results describe the influence of some process variables on the melting kinetics of solid particles. The formation of the solid shell around metallic particles is expressed as a function of the initial particle size and arc length.