Steel production involves a high-temperature melting process that produces huge amounts of dust-laden gas. Heat emission from the furnace forms a highly turbulent, buoyant plume.

Dedusting systems are introduced in a ventilation hood to minimize emission and to clean the plant. With the help of Fluent software, you can determine optimum operating conditions (such as suction rates) and improve ventilation performance by design modifications of the canopy hood and the crane/trolley arrangement.

Ventilation in a steel melting plant

Courtesy of Johannes Kepler University Linz and VOEST ALPINE Industrieanlagenbau GmBH

In this example, a discrete spectrum of dust particle sizes (representative of a measured spectrum) was modeled, with particle sizes ranging from 0.1 to 100 microns. Results show that the larger particles settle in the vicinity of the EAF, but smaller particles (1 micron) disperse throughout the entire plant.