Incorporating dust lift-off into a CFD model of a blast furnace gravity dust-catcher

A gravity dust-catcher separates a mixture of dusts from the spent top gas flow of a blast furnace. These dusts are predominantly made up of limestone, iron ore and coke/coal. As a result of the turbulent gas flow patterns within a dust-catcher, modelling of the flow pattern can be very complex, attributed to the turbulent vortices that can be formed within the main body of the structure. Using data from an experimental prototype test rig, a simple model to capture the lift-off characteristics of particle lift-off from dust pile surfaces is created and incorporated into a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of the dust-catcher.The variation of particle separation performance over a typical blast furnace (BF) operational cycle is analysed. An attempt is made to explain the observed phenomena in terms of particle–fluid interaction. It is found that particle separation efficiency is largely unaffected by dust lift-off at low dust-catcher hopper fullness levels, but is significant at higher levels. It is found that the topography of the dust surface is important when predicting particle lift-off trends. It is concluded that this is due to the exposure experienced by a given particle when subjected to a surface velocity.