Numerical Study of Arc Exposure about Water-Panel Overheating in an Electric Arc Furnace

Electric arc furnace (EAF) is a furnace that utilizes electric energy and chemical energy to melt scraps and produce liquid steel. During the industrial process of EAF, an electric arc will be generated around the electrode located at the center of the furnace, and this phenomenon will generate a lot of heat. If any part of the electric arc is exposed to the freeboard region, a region above the slag layer inside the furnace, the heat emitted by this exposed arc can significantly heat on side wall temperatures, resulting in an overheating issue of side wall. Water-cooling panels (WCP) have been used to cool down the side wall, but the concentrated overheating area, may damage the water-cooling panel. In this study, a combination of slag foaming phenomenon and electric arc has been considered. A calculator is developed based on several arc models to calculate the parameters about slag foaming and arc power. The parameters can be used as input in a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. The commercial software, ANSYS FLUENT^®, was utilized to give a prediction of the side wall temperature distribution of an EAF. Data from the plant has been used to validate the calculation results. Furthermore, a series of parametric studies has been investigated to study the influence of operating conditions. The developed model can help to predict the risk of overheating from given electrode conditions and slag compositions.