The movement of the burden in submerged-arc furnaces for the production of high-carbon ferromanganese

The mechanism by which the burden moves in a submerged-arc furnace was investigated in two large industrial furnaces by the stimulus-response technique with a radiotracer of the radio-isotope 5 Fe as the stimulus. As this radio-isotope was suitable only for the measurement of residence-time distributions in the alloy phase, the analysis of the experiments was limited to that phase. The residence-time distributions obtained by the measurement of alloy samples obtained during tapping were analysed by various techniques. This analysis verified the existence of stagnant zones within the furnace, and showed that the movement of the burden through the furnace could not be described by either of the two idealized patterns of flow, i.e., plug flow or mixed flow. A composite model to describe the movement of the burden through the furnace was developed by consideration of the mechanism and position of heat generation within the furnace, the inner structure of the furnace, the general form of the measured residence-time distributions, and the mode of burden descent through the furnace. The composite model consisted of a dispersed plug-flow region in the upper regions of the furnace discharging into a constantly stirred tank reactor beneath the electrode tips. Non-linear regression analysis of the equations developed from the composite model permitted the selection of optimum values of model parameters to give computed curves that approximated to the residence-time distributions