BHP New Zealand Steel produces iron from titaniferous
ironsand by a direct reduction process comprising multihearth furnaces/rotary
kilns/electric iron melters. The electric iron melter is a six-in-line
rectangular submerged-arc furnace which takes the partially reduced ironsand (80
per cent metallisation) from the rotary kiln and completes the reduction process
to produce iron of nominally three per cent carbon. As the melter operates at
around 1500C and under very hostile conditions, it is near-impossible to obtain
any basic operating parameters such as the velocity and temperature distribution
in the slag and in the molten iron. As a first attempt to understand the
operating conditions inside the melter, a scaled room-temperature model using
wax and water to represent the slag and iron, was constructed. This paper will
report on some of the preliminary model results on the temperature
distribution.