Kinetic model of steel refining in a ladle furnace

A ladle furnace operates with a highly reducing slag provided the slag carry over is properly controlled; however, this seldom occurs. In addition, argon injection is also employed to increase mass transfer and thus, the removal of impurities from the molten steel. The refining process is mathematically modeled in this work on the basis of mass transfer control. The model involves the computation of activities with the use of a regular solution model, incorporates interaction parameter's and computation of a mass transfer coefficient which allow for the determination of the mass transfer rates across the slag-metal interface under conditions of equilibrium at the interface. The model predicts the composition profile of both slag and steel during the refining process and can be used to make corrections to the initial slag composition in order to decrease both the refining time and the final concentration of impurities in liquid steel.