VIRTUAL EVENT｜ December 14 – 16, 2021
For promoting exchange of the metallurgical technologies in the steel industry in the new period, The Chinese Society for Metals (CSM) launched and organized an international symposium named as “China Symposium on Sustainable Steelmaking Technology” in 2018. The first Symposium was held in Tianjin, China on October 25-26, 2018 and received a highly positive response from the metallurgical industry and academy. Afterwards, it will be held every three years in other major Chinese cities.
Join Our Keynote Presentation
Thermodynamic and kinetic simulation of the iron- and steelmaking process using Thermo-Calc and CALPHAD type database: towards a digital twin of the melt shop
Authors: A. Nicholas Grundy, Ralf Retting, and Lina Kjellqvist
Date: December 15, 2021
Time: 8:40 a.m. CET
Thermo-Calc Software is a well-known developer of large CALPHAD-type databases and software for property and phase diagram calculations based on Gibbs energy minimization. A database for oxides, TCOX, has been available since 1992 and development has been greatly accelerated in recenet years placing special emphasis on steel-slag interactions.
Steelmaking and steel refining is on one side governed by fundamental thermodynamics, that determines how the steel chemistry and also inclusion type, composition and amount will change on reaction with slag phase, refractory material, alloy additions and gas atmosphere. Thermodynamics also governs the heat balance, so how steel temperature will change due to heat input and chemical reactions taking place during the process. Thermo-Calc Software is a well-known developer of large CALPHAD-type databases and software for multicomponent and multi-phase calculations based on Gibbs energy minimization. The TCOX database has been specifically developed for thermodynamic calculations of steel making and -refining. It combines all relevant phases ion one single database and has been validated for a wide range of steel and slag compositions.
The other important aspect of steelmaking and -refining is reaction kinetics, so how fast thermodynamic equilibrium is approached. Recently, kinetic models have been implemented in Thermo-Calc’s Process Metallurgy Module (PMM) using the effective equilibrium reaction zone (EERZ) model. This development now allows full simulations of steelmaking and -refining processes.
The graphical user interface of the PMM enables simple and intuitive set-up of processes such as BOF, EAF, LF, VOD/AOD, etc… for the analysis and process optimization for different grades with different quality requirements. The model has been validated for several steelmaking processes including LF and VOD.
All functionalities of the PMM are now being integrated into TC-Python, a software development kit, that allows setting up and running process simulations from within a Python code. This allows the implementation of complex industrial processes and makes it possible to directly access steel plant Level 2 process data and chemical analyses and use this data to run process simulations. Such simulations exactly mirror the steel production process and can be considered as digital twin of the melt shop. The simulations can be used to understand the origin of quality issues and unexpected events that might have occurred during production or to investigate alternative processing routes that might have lower total production costs, have lower environmental impact, or might meet more stringent quality requirements.