Effects of Surrounding Hydrogen Injection Parameters on Coherent Jet Characteristics in Electric Arc Furnace Steelmaking Process

Abstract

The application of coherent oxygen injection improves the smelting efficiency and product quality by promoting the homogenization and impurities removal effects in electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaking process. CH4 is widely applied as surrounding gas in traditional coherent jets, which inescapability generates some greenhouse gases (GHG), and against the ambitious carbon reduction goal. Herein, H2 instead of CH4 as surrounding gas in coherent jet is introduced. Based on fluid and combustion mechanics, a computational fluid dynamics model with hydrogen–oxygen combustion is developed and validated to study coherent jet characteristics considering H2 flow and ambient temperature. The results indicate that the shrouding hydrogen nozzle has a significant impact on the potential core length of the coherent jet. Shrouding oxygen can solve the problem of excessive consumption of main oxygen by shrouding hydrogen. When the equivalent ratio between shrouding hydrogen and shrouding oxygen maintains 1, increasing the flow rates is highly beneficial for improving oxygen jet performance at tested conditions. The potential core length of the jet increases little with the ambient temperature in the range of 1100–1700 K. This research is expected to extend hydrogen application in EAF steelmaking process for GHG reduction.