CFD Study of the Melting of Pellets in a Liquid Metal Bath of the Same Composition Under Static and Forced Convection Conditions Through the Eulerian Enthalpy-Porosity Technique

This article demonstrates that the enthalpy-porosity technique was successfully applied to determine the melting of DRI (direct-reduced iron) and Al pellets in a liquid of the same composition under static and forced-convection bath conditions. It also confirms that this study accurately represents the entire pellet-melting process, from shell formation to complete melting. The pellet’s internal thermal gradients and movement due to molten-steel flow were calculated using a dynamic mesh. The technique was first validated using experimental data by obtaining melting curves for aluminum spheres in their own baths at different temperatures under static bath conditions. The total melting times for the aluminum spheres in their own baths were 10 s at 750 °C, 18 s at 700 °C, and 33 s at 680 °C, showing good agreement with experimental data. The melting time for the DRI pellet in the liquid steel bath at 1500 °C was 9 s with forced convection and 11 s in the static bath. This test case shows that the technique can represent, within the same domain, actual bath stirring conditions and the melting of many solid particles, as occurs in many metallurgical processes, which is the future of simulating these complex systems.