Preliminary investigation on the capability of eXtended Discrete Element method for treating the dripping zone of a blast furnace

The role of molten iron and slag in the dripping zone of a blast furnace is very critical to reach a stable operational condition. The existence of several fluid phases and solid particles in the dripping zone of a blast furnace, makes the newly developed eXteneded Discrete Element Method (XDEM) as an Eulerian-Lagrangian approach, suitable to resolve the dripping zone of a blast furnace. In the proposed model, the fluid phases are treated by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) while the solid particles are solved by Discrete Element Method (DEM). These two methods are coupled via momentum, heat and mass exchanges. The main focus of current study is to investigate the influence of packed properties such as porosity and particle diameters, calculated by the XDEM, on the fluid phases for isothermal. In order to present the capability of the XDEM for this application. The validity of the proposed model is demonstrated by comparing model prediction results with the available experimental data