Validation and Calibration Approach for Discrete Element Simulation of Burden Charging in Pre-reduction Shaft Furnace of COREX Process

Discrete element method (DEM) has been an increasingly used tool to get better understanding of charging process and flow behaviors of granular materials in metallurgical reactors. However, validation and precision of DEM must be verified and calibrated. In this paper, a calibration approach is proposed for the sphere equivalence of irregular particles in DEM simulation of charging process. In this approach, the non-sphere behavior of irregular particles is characterized by a pair of apparent sliding and rolling resistance coefficients obtained by quantitative comparison of the angle of repose and discharging time of hopper based on laboratory measurement of physical benchmarking experiments. The calibration approach is applied in the DEM simulation of the charging process of a shaft furnace in COREX 3000. Validation of simulation results for flow trajectory and stream width after leaving chute and burden distribution and profile is investigated through comparison of DEM and experiments. The results show that, with such a calibration approach, DEM can be easily used to simulate solid flow of irregular particles.