Abstract:
The steel ladle's refractory service life suffered a considerable reduction in performance. Historically, the main region that limits the equipment's lifetime is the slag line purging panel, near the porous plug, which presents low residuals at the end of each campaign due to corrosive and erosive phenomena, the latter mainly caused by the influence of gas injection of bubbling system. In this context, a simulation study was carried out to investigate the effects of moving the purging plug away from the ladle walls. The simulation study compared the reference plug position with two new alternatives: the first one, moving the plug vertically by 100mm from a top view perspective, and the second one, moving the plug radially by 141mm (100mm on both sides from a top view perspective). The simulation results show that changing the plug position has a positive impact on wall wear, reducing the maximum wall shear stress by 29% in the first position alternative and by 50% in the second position alternative. As the second position alternative presented the best results, it was adopted in plant trials. A total of seven full campaigns were tested using the new position, and the results showed a considerable increase in ladle performance, with a potential service life of 97 heats and a wear rate of 1.7mm/heat, which is about 23% lower than the average value of 2.2mm/heat in the same period.