Experimental Investigation of Coke Collapse in Quasi-two Dimensional System for a Blast Furnace

In the iron making industry, the blast furnace is charged with coke and ore (metallic) particles by means of an inclined chute rotating about its vertical axis. For each rotation, the particles fall on the sloping burden and form a circular ring. Charging of this metallic ore burden over the layer of coke causes a portion of the coke layer to get dislodged from its original position. This phenomenon is known as coke collapse. We have studied these phenomena in a quasi two dimensional rectangular bin on a smaller scale. In-order to get the desired density difference between the pouring media, stainless-steel balls (representing the ore) and glass- beads (representing the coke) are used as the model granular materials. The parameters varied in the experiments are the volume of pouring and the size of particles (steel balls). Varying quantities of these particles are poured into the experimental unit and the resulting pattern thus formed is then captured using a Nikon-DX camera. The images are analyzed using computer code to determine the position of each particle (steel ball and glass bead). The results presented here are in terms of concentration of steel balls by making bins of 5x5 mm in size. The interface (stock line) between the steel balls and the glass beads has been analyzed separately and plotted for all data sets. Each experiment has been repeated three times in-order to get an average data.