As part of the European Green Deal, many material production processes need to be adapted. Reduction processes in particular nowadays mostly use carbon carriers such as coal, coke or natural gas as reducing agents. One of the biggest CO2 emitters is the steel industry. In the classic process route, iron ore is reduced to pig iron in the blast furnace using coke. As the coke also performs static tasks in the furnace, it is difficult to defossilize the blast furnace. An alternative route, which is currently being promoted by many steel manufacturers and plant builders, consists of direct reduction of the iron ore with hydrogen and subsequent melting in the electric smelting furnace (ESF). The latter can be designed as a submerged arc furnace (SAF) or open slag bath furnace (OSBF), which means differences in the charging of the raw material.
In this presentation a CFD model of a SAF will be presented and it will be shown how the relevant process areas and phenomena (arc, radiation, chemical reactions, etc.) were modeled.