Numerical investigation of pulverized coal injection behavior in a blast furnace

Based on the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technology, the modeling and simulation of multiphase flow in an iron-making blast furnace (BF) with pulverized coal injection (PCI) is developed. In the simulations, many physical parameters of phases are visualized under different rate of PCI, showing the inner state of BF. Including the gas, solid, liquid and powder, four phases are considered with different materials properties and chemical reactions in BF. For studying the microscopic mechanism of pulverized coal injection process to decrease the coke rate and optimize BF operation further, the multiphase-coupled interactions and combustion phenomena is described by mathematical equations. The calculated results show that the gas-solid-powder flow varies spatially, particularly in the raceway. The powder flow is strongly affected by the air and coke particles under the cohesive zone. Some physical properties of phases got by numerical calculation was contrastive analyzed with the field data, showing the feasibility of simulation results. The numerical simulation has shown the complex phenomena with different PCI rate in a BF. Then, the simulated BF states with higher rate of coal injection show that the ability of PCI could be enhanced to a certain extent.