Effects of Tracer Solute Buoyancy on Flow Behavior in a Single-Strand Tundish

To investigate the effect of the tracer on the fluid flow in the water model, a mathematical model which involves in solute buoyancy is developed to describe the flow field in a single-strand tundish water model. The numerical results show that the tracer solute buoyancy has a great effect on the flow state in the water model, and the RTD curve by saturated KCl solution tracer is closer to the ideal RTD curve than that by saturated NaCl solution tracer. With the decrease of the saturated KCl solution volume or mass concentration, the RTD curves change from the double-peak RTD curve to the multi-peak RTD curve and then to the single-peak RTD curve. The dimensionless tracer number Tr is proposed to analyze the effect of solute buoyancy on the flow field, and its distribution is similar to the tracer mass concentration distribution. The dimensionless tracer parameter number Dtp is proposed to regulate the parameters of the tracer. For the water model, KCl tracer is better than NaCl tracer, and Dtp < 4.44 × 10 -5 can be applied to determine the KCl tracer parameter. In the industry production case, when Dtp < 1.18 × 10 -5 , the effect of Ni on flow field can be ignored.