Numerical Study of the Bubble Behavior of a Ladle with Different Purging Plug Designs.

The purging plug determines the downtime and usage efficiency of the ladle‐refining process. Therefore, the optimization of its geometry can improve the ladle performance. Herein, suitable boundary conditions for numerical simulations are derived by combining water model experiments with numerical simulations. Furthermore, the influence of various parameters, such as the distribution shape of the circular slits and spacing between the circles on the bubble size, is investigated. The results show that rectangular distribution facilitates the reduction of bubble size compared to circular distribution because of the larger slit spacing to bubble diameter (Sds) of the rectangular distribution. In addition, distributing more circular slits around the edge of the purging plug reduces the pressure gradient generated by the velocity difference from the center of the bubble plume to the sides and increases Sds, which can decrease the probability of coalescence. Therefore, it is beneficial to reduce the overall bubble size in the ladle when the circular slits are more distributed at the edge of the purging plug. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]