Optimisation of dual purging location for better mixing in ladle: a water model study

Mixing time studies were performed on a one-fifth scale aqueous model of a single tapered ladle with different bottom purging locations. Two porous plugs were used simultaneously to purge compressed air as an analogue to argon and this was referred as dual purging. KCl solution (1 N) was used as the tracer for measuring mixing time. The scaled down gas flowrate varied from 10 to 80 L m -1 . Around 400 experiments were done including all possible dual purging locations and the location which gives least mixing time was identified. The results were compared with corresponding single purging experiments and it was found that dual purging can reduce mixing time to a great extent even in the lower flowrate range and a location better than ±R/2 has been suggested. Effect of differential flow on mixing time has also been reported.