BHP New Zealand Steel produces iron from titaniferous ironsand by a direct reduction process comprising multi- hearth 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% metallization) from the rotary kiln and completes the
reduction process to produce iron of nominally 3% carbon. As the melter operates at around 1500 C 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.