Modelling of the Electrical Behaviour of Smelting Furnaces

The main purpose of the project is to get a more accurate understanding of the current distribution in smelting furnaces. The focus is currently on submerged arc furnaces for FeMn production, which operates on three-phase alternating current (AC). Today’s understanding is highly based on direct current (DC), and several aspects of AC is neglected. Even with modern computer technology and software, AC models are still complex and lengthy. An important task is therefore to understand how the models may be simplified and still be relevant for industrial use. To achieve this task, we study simple analytical models as well as full numerical AC models. The full models are solved numerically in COMSOL Multiphysics. Initially we only consider the electromagnetic distributions of the furnace. At a later stage, we will introduce the interaction with other physical phenomena, such as chemical reactions, thermal distribution and material flow. 

This work is a part of the ElMet (Electrical conditions in Metal processes) project. ElMet is a competence project to establish a detailed understanding of how the conditions in an electrical smelting furnace are influenced by 3-phase alternating current. The project duration is 5 years, from 2015 to 2020. ElMet is co-funded by The Research Council of Norway and the industrial partners Elkem, Eramet and Alcoa. Teknova is the project owner and collaborates with the research partners NTNU, University of Santiago de Compostela and University of Oxford.

Resource Group: Pilar Salgado (USC), Dolores Gómes (USC), Svenn Anton Halvorsen (Teknova), Egil Vålandsmyr Herland (Teknova) 

Contact: mads.fromreide@teknova.no