PMET_04: Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) Kinetics

The example uses the Process Metallurgy Calculator to simulate the kinetics of the Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) process. This application example in its various forms is available on our website.

Metallurgical processes such as the BOF process rarely reach equilibrium. Therefore, a model description must include kinetics if meaningful results are to be obtained. In recent years, a simple but powerful model termed the Effective Equilibrium Reaction Zone (EERZ) model has been developed and widely applied to simulate various metallurgical processes.

This example shows you how to set up a kinetic simulation of the BOF process in the Process Metallurgy Module and includes a description of the EERZ model. For information about the equilibrium examples, see PMET_01: Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF).

  • Folder: Process Metallurgy

Choose a, b, or c versions of the example based on your license.

  • PMET_04a_Basic_Oxygen_Furnace_Kinetics is included in a regular Thermo-Calc installation as well as the free Educational version of Thermo-Calc. This only considers the elements Fe, C, and O.
  • PMET_04b_Basic_Oxygen_Furnace_Kinetics needs a full license of Thermo-Calc 2021b or newer, but uses the free OXDEMO database. It considers the elements Fe, C, O, Ca, Al, Si, and S.
  • PMET_04c_Basic_Oxygen_Furnace_Kinetics requires both a full license of Thermo-Calc 2021b or newer and a license for the TCOX11 database and newer. This simulation corresponds pretty much to a real BOF process with the elements Fe, Mn, C, O, Ca, Al, Mg, Si, S, and P considered.

Visualizations

Many of our Graphical Mode examples have video tutorials, which you can access in a variety of ways. When in Thermo‑Calc, from the menu select Help → Video Tutorials, or from the main My Project window, click Video Tutorials. Alternately, you can go to the website or our YouTube channel.

Open the example project file to review the node setup on the Project window and the associated settings on the Configuration window for each node. For some types of projects, you can also adjust settings on the Plot Renderer Configuration window to preview results before performing the simulation. Click Perform Tree to generate plots and tables to see the results on the Visualizations window.

The resulting plots and details related to setting up this example are available to download via the dedicated web page.