Lance Design and Mechanism

Oxygen Lance
 The lance is made of three concentric steel tubes to
circulate water around the central tube and pass
oxygen through the most inner tube.
 The lance is nearly 8-10 m long and its diameter
varies with furnace capacity.
 Water requirements are around 50-70 m3/hr at a
pressure of 5-7 kg/cm3.
 Lance is suspended by a wire rope and can be
inserted in or withdrawn from the furnace by means
of an electrically operated lance gear. (sensor based
automatic lance are being used)
Non circulating fluid

KALDO Process the convertor is rotated

CO bubble
Lance Design
 Supersonic jet issuing from the nozzle of a lance in a
L.D. process should :
1. Penetrate the bath adequately.
2. Area of its impact on the bath should be max.

 In the blowing situation the lance height from the

still bath level has to be more than the length over
which the supersonic core extends in the jet, since
the jet is not fully expanded until that point.
 In actual practice the proper height would be around 40-
.
50 times the diameter of the nozzle.

 The depth of penetration of a jet in a bath can be assessed

in terms of the jet force number as:
JFN = gas pr. * nozzle throat dia./height of nozzle
Drawbacks of Cylindrical nozzle
Static pressure in a jet from a cylindrical nozzle, as it
emerges into the ambient atmosphere, is more than the
atmospheric pressure.
It, therefore, interacts with atmosphere generating shock
waves and the velocity of the jet decreases with
damped fluctuations. This affects the bath penetration
as well as area of impact adversely.
How it is eliminated !
Using a convergent laval shaped nozzle :
1. Static pressure in the jet from the nozzle
disappears within a short distance from the
nozzle tip and hence it does not interact much
with the ambient atmosphere.

2. The velocity of the jet decreases more uniformly

with much less of damped fluctuations.
 .
3. The velocity at any point in the stream is more than
at the corresponding point of the stream from a similar
size cylindrical nozzle under similar conditions of
blowing.

4. The resultant bath penetration is more in the case of

laval shaped nozzle than due to cylindrical nozzle.
Mechanism :
Oxygen is generally blown at 8-10 atmosphere
pressure through a laval shaped nozzle so that the jet
issuing at the nozzle exit is supersonic generally has a
velocity between 1.5-2.5 times the velocity of sound.

The jet has a characteristically a potential core, a

supersonic core and a subsonic region.

As the jet travels, its velocity is retarded due to the

ambient atmosphere, the supersonic surrounding zone
expands radially.
Variables. For Lance Coolants
-The sp heat of the coolant
-The rate of mass flow
-The design of Lance
-The conductivity of the material (its thickness)
-The conductivity of the material of Lance

The velocity of the supersonic core gradually decreases

until at a distance of about 30 times the nozzle diameter
from the nozzle tip, the jet becomes wholly subsonic.
This point marks the end of supersonic and the
development of a fully expanded jet.
The velocity of the jet deceases hereafter more rapidly.
Conclusions :
The laval shaped nozzle is universally adopted due to
the limitations faced by the cylindrical nozzle.
During the blow the jet should be expanded to obtain
impact area at the bath surface.
The depth of penetration of a jet in a metal bath varies
inversely with the impact area at the bath surface.
In the blowing position the lance height from the still bath
. has to be more than the length over which the
level
supersonic core extends in the jet, since the jet is not fully
expanded until that point.
Decarburization is faster for greater values of JFN and
dephosphorisation is faster for reverse conditions.