A phase-field model for growth of iron whiskers that includes convection around a particle was investigated during the process of fluidized pre-reduction. In the simulations, the phase-field method was coupled with flow field and reduction of iron oxide particles. The results showed that the reduction rate at local place had significant effects on the iron ions diffusion and the iron whiskers were more easily grown on the area containing low mole fraction of oxygen. The growth of iron whiskers in the model was investigated in two important simple situations: a velocity change flow and a CO concentration change flow. Because of high reduction rate and low surface energy, iron whiskers were more easily grown on the windward surface and the length of iron whiskers increased with gas velocity increasing. However, both the length and numbers of iron whiskers increased with CO concentration increasing due to the more nucleation site of iron whiskers created by CO adsorbed. When the gas velocity is higher than 0.3 m/s or CO mole fraction is high than 0.6, the nucleation incubation time would be rapidly decreased, which could give suggestions to control the operational parameters in the fluidized pre-reduction process.
The agglomeration behavior of particles significantly impacts on the defluidization occurring in a fluidized bed during the direct reduction process.The influence of CO/H_(2)ratio on surface diffusion of iron atoms was proposed,and the solid bridge force between iron oxide particles was quantificationally analyzed.Moreover,the solid bridge force was successfully added into a CFD–DEM(computational fluid dynamics–discrete element method)model combined with heat transfer and mass transport to investigate the detailed information of agglomeration in a fluidized bed,including the spatial distribution of temperature,velocity and metallization of iron oxide particles.The region of defluidization is sensitive to the reduction temperature.At the same reduction temperature,the iron oxide powder will perform higher metallization and stable fluidization properties with molar fraction of H_(2)in the range of 0.6–0.8,when iron oxide is reduced by CO/H_(2)mixture.
