Thermal Simulation of Scrap Melting in Iron‐Carbon Bath

Increasing the scrap ratio in the steelmaking process is of great economic and low‐carbon benefit for the iron and steel industry. How to promote the rapid melting of scrap in a molten bath is a critical problem restricting its efficient utilization in the steelmaking process. Therefore, the melting behavior of scrap in an iron‐carbon molten bath was investigated through thermal simulation experiments in this study, and the effect of scrap preheating temperature, carbon content of scrap and molten bath, and specific surface area on scrap melting was revealed. The results showed that increasing the scrap preheating temperature, carbon content of scrap and molten bath, specific surface area significantly reduced the melting time. When the preheating temperature was raised from 273 to 1133 K, the melting time was decreased from 428 to 248 s. As the carbon content of scrap was increased from 0.08% to 0.62%, the carbon transfer coefficient was added from 3.59 × 10 −5 to 5.83 × 10 −5 m/s, and the total melting time was decreased from 515 to 317 s. When the scrap specific surface area was added from 0.28 to 0.81 mm 2 /mm 3 , the migration rate of solid–liquid interface rose from 0.056 to 0.125 mm/s. This study could provide theoretical and experimental references for scrap melting in the steelmaking process.