The influence of porous plug type on argon blowing process

The most important tasks of secondary metallurgy are to accelerate the course of steel production processes and to improve its quality, at the same time limiting the amount of work, energy and sources. The basic and popularly applied treatment of secondary metallurgy is blowing the liquid steel in the ladle by inert gases. The introduction of gas into the liquid steel can be realized by differently constructed porous plugs installed in bottom of the ladle. Because there is aggressive character of the working conditions thus these plugs should be thermally and mechanically resistant, have appropriate permeability, and be able to create required amount of gas bubbles and their dispersion in the whole volume of liquid steel. Today in industry three kinds of porous plugs are used differing with construction: plugs with porous segment, crevice type and hybrid plugs. Article presents the results of modelling research conducted with using the model of ladle with possibilities of blowing the metal bath. Research was carried out for four different types of porous plugs: two plugs crevice types with different crevice placing, plugs with porous segment and hybrid plug (crevices plus porous segment). The results of research was obtained in the form of visualization of gas bubbles creation, mechanism of gas bubbles cone creation (gaseous column) and determination of time and way of mixing the modelling liquid in the dependence on the applied type of plug.