Model study of liquid flow in the blast furnace lower zone

Countercurrent gas-liquid interactions in the lower zone of a blast furnace play an important role in achieving stable operations with high productivity and efficiency. Previous gas-liquid flow models for the blast furnace did not adequately consider both the discrete nature of liquid flow and the strong, localised gas-liquid interactions occurring in the cohesive zone, which have been elucidated experimentally. The present work details a two-dimensional numerical model and a cold two-dimensional physical model, used to study gas-liquid flow in the blast furnace cohesive zone. The numerical model utilises a force balance approach to describe the discrete liquid flow and a stochastic treatment to take into account the complex packing structure. The validity of this model was demonstrated by the good agreement between model predictions and experimental observations. The model can be applied to simulate gas-liquid two-phase flow in a layered packing with multiple liquid sources, similar to the blast furnace lower zone condition.