In an ironmaking blast furnace (BF), ferrous materials melt into liquid in cohesive zone (CZ) and penetrates through coke bed to hearth while interacting with gas and solid flow. The liquid behavior can significantly affect the bed permeability, gas and liquid distributions and associated heat and mass transfer in the lower part of BF, especially when smelting different ore types. It largely determines BF process stability. Because of harsh operating conditions, effective tools are still lacking to quantify the liquid flow and its influence on BF performance. Our study aimed to solve this problem by further developing the liquid flow model based on our recent CFD process model. Particularly, the silicon reduction and carburization occurring in BF lower part are explicitly modelled in this work. The effects of blast temperature and silica content in coke ash are investigated to validate the model applicability. Additionally, different burden distributions are tested to lower the silicon content in HM. The proposed work can provide an extended applicability to describe the silicon transfer in the BF lower part to guide practical production.

blast furnace,liquid flow,silicon transfer,CFD process model