Plasma Science and Technology, Vol.14, No.4, Apr.

2012

3D Numerical Analysis of the Arc Plasma Behavior in a Submerged

DC Electric Arc Furnace for the Production of Fused MgO
WANG Zhen (), WANG Ninghui (), LI Tie (), CAO Yong ()
School of Electrical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China

Abstract

A three dimensional steady-state magnetohydrodynamic model is developed for the

arc plasma in a DC submerged electric arc furnace for the production of fused MgO. The arc is
generated in a small semi-enclosed space formed by the graphite electrode, the molten bath and
unmelted raw materials. The model is first used to solve a similar problem in a steel making
furnace, and the calculated results are found to be in good agreement with the published measurements. The behavior of arcs with different arc lengths is also studied in the furnace for MgO
production. From the distribution of the arc pressure on the bath surface it is shown that the
arc plasma impingement is large enough to cause a crater-like depression on the surface of the
MgO bath. The circulation of the high temperature air under the electrode may enhance the arc
efficiency, especially for a shorter arc.

Keywords: numerical simulation, DC electric arc furnace, arc plasma, temperature field,
flow field

PACS: 52.50.Nr
DOI: 10.1088/1009-0630/14/4/10

Introduction

Studies in the field of metallurgy, production of refractories, and other industrial sectors have been carried out for many years. The expertise gained in the use
of a variety of metal treatment equipment leads to the
conclusion that DC electric arc furnaces (EAF) can be
effectively used in many technological applications [1] .
A twin-electrode DC submerged electric arc furnace
(SAF) was designed for MgO-crystal production. This
technique was also found as another effective method to
grow high quality MgO single crystals [2] . Because the
environment for crystal growth is significantly affected
by the arc behavior, a fundamental understanding of
the heat and fluid flow in the arc plasma is necessary.
Due to the hostile environment for observing the process occurring in the inner zone of the furnace, numerical simulations for similar processes are used to obtain
detailed information in some studies. USHIO et al. [3]
and SZEKELY et al. [4] conducted numerical simulations of a DC EAF using the turbulent Navier-Stokes
and Maxwell equations to predict the contributions of
the different mechanisms of heat transfer from the arc
to the bath. Recently, QIAN et al. [5] studied the arc
plasma by a similar method, and obtained some results
for different arc currents and anode-cathode distances.
WANG et al. [6] used the PHOENICS software package
to solve the governing equations and gave useful conclusions in arcs heat transfer and bath circulation. The
simulated results illustrated above [36] were all compared with experimental data by BOWMAN [7] . In his
study, BOWMAN measured plasma velocity distribu supported

tions in free-burning DC arcs of up to 2160 A. Using

high-speed digital video cameras, the behaviors of highcurrent arcs were photographed by JONES et al. [8] ,
and both shape and size of the depression caused by
the impingement of the arc were observed.
In a steel making EAF, the arc was generated in a
large enough space above the bath surface, so it was reasonable to assume an unbounded bath surface for the
arc plasma simulation in all previous studies. However,
affected by continuously charged raw materials, the arc
plasma may behave differently in the melting process
of a SAF for MgO production. Additionally, the arc
behavior is often characterised by a shorter arc length
with a larger arc current during the realistic operation
of the SAF. In this paper, a three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic model of arc plasma is presented. The
influence of the arc length on the arc characteristics is
investigated to gain a better understanding of the heat
transfer and fluid flow in the SAF.

Mathematical model

Since the highly purified MgO powder in the furnace

is an ideal thermal and electrical insulator and its melting point is very high, the design of the bottom electrode in the DC furnace for steel making is abandoned.
Instead, a twin-electrode submerged furnace is adopted
to produce high-purity MgO single crystals. This implies that one of the electrodes is the cathode and the
other is the anode. In this study, main focuses are put
on the effects of the arc plasma on the MgO bath. The

by the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (No. 2008AA03A325)

Plasma Science and Technology, Vol.14, No.4, Apr. 2012

dimensions of the computational domain are shown in
Fig. 1. The arc is modeled in a three-dimensional cylindrical coordinate system and the domain of ADD-FEE
is used to solve the plasma flow field, as is shown in
Fig. 1. The MgO material is assumed to be charged
outside the curve DDEE. The plasma arc can be described by mass, momentum and energy conservation
equations. Before setting the governing equations for
the plasma arc, the following assumptions should be
made:
a.

The arc is steady and radially symmetrical.

b. The arc is assumed to be in local thermodynamic

equilibrium (LTE).
c. No interface deformation is considered. The interface between the plasma arc and the molten bath is
a flat surface.
d. The plasma is optically thin, which implies that
re-absorption of radiation by the plasma is insignificant,
compared to the total radiative loss.

Azimuthal momentum conservation

1
1 2

(rv vr ) +
v +
(v vz )
r r
r
z
1 P
h v
v
1 vr i
=
+
e

+
r
r
r
r
r
1 v
1 h
vr i
h v

+
2e
+
+
e
r
r
r
z
z
1 vz i 2e 1 vr
v
v
vr v
+
+
+

.
r
r r
r
r
r

(3)

Axial momentum conservation

1
1
2
(rvz vr ) +
(vz v ) +
vz
r r
r
z

1
vz
vr
P
+ jr B +
e r
+
=
z
r r
r
z

(4)

1
1 vz
v

vz
e
+
2e
.
+
+
r
r
z
z
z
Energy conservation
1 (rvr h) 1 (v h) (vz h)
+
+
r
r
r

1
Ke h
1 Ke h
=+
r
+ 2
r r
cp r
r cp

+
z

Fig.1

Computational domain for the arc plasma

5kB
+
2e

2.1

jr 2 + jz 2 + j 2
Sr

jr h jz h j h
+
+
cp r
cp z
cp

(5)

Hydrodynamic problem

Under the above assumptions, the governing equations can be expressed as follows:
Mass conservation
1
1

(rvr ) +
(v ) +
(vz ) = 0.
r r
r
z

(1)

Radial momentum conservation

1
1

rvr2 +
(vr v ) +
(vr vz )
r r
r r
z
P
vr 1 h 1 vr
1
=
2re
+
e
+
r
r r
r
r
r
h vz
v
v i
vr i
+
e
+

+
r
r
z
r
z

1 v
vr
v2
2e vr

+ jz B .
+
r
r
r
r
r
322

Ke h
cp z

In Eqs. (1)(5), the variables are the pressure (P ),

radial velocity (vr ), azimuthal velocity (v ), axial velocity (vz ), current density (J) and plasma enthalpy
(h), while the plasma properties are density (), heat
capacity (cp ), radiative loss (Sr ), viscous dissipation
term (), electrical conductivity (), azimuthal magnetic field (B ), Boltzmann constant (kB ) and electron
charge (e).
The viscosity (e ) and thermal conductivity (Ke ) include both laminar and turbulent components,
e = + t , Ke = K + Kt .

(2)

(6)

The laminar components are derived from kinetic theory while the turbulent components are determined using the k turbulence model.
In the k turbulence model, incorporated into the
present calculations, the eddy viscosity t and eddy
thermal conductivity Kt are obtained from
t = C

k2
t cp
, Kt =
,

P rt

(7)

WANG Zhen et al.: Arc Plasma Behavior in a Submerged DC EAF for the Production of Fused MgO
where k is the turbulence kinetic energy, is the dissipation rate of the turbulence kinetic energy, P rt is the
turbulent prandtl number, and C is one of the constants of the model.
Two turbulence variables k and are obtained by
solving
1 (vr rk) 1 (v k) (vz k)
+
+
r
r
r

1
t k
= t +
r l +
r r
k r
+

1
r2

t k

t k
l +
+
l +
,
k
z
k z
(8)

and
1 (vr r) 1 (v ) (vz )
+
+
r
r
r
z

2
1
t
r l +
= C1 t C2 +
k
k
r r
r
1
+ 2
r

t
l +
+
l +
,

z
z

=2

vz
z

vr
r

1 v
vr
+
r
r

C1

C2

P rt

1.44

1.92

1.0

1.3

0.09

0.9

2.2

Electromagnetic problem

In order to get the magnetic flux density distribution

B, the following electromagnetic equations are solved in
this paper.
The Laplaces equation for the scalar electrical potential ,
() = 0,
(11)
with the electrical conductivity. Eq. (11) results from
the Amp`eres law J = 0 and Ohms law J = .
The equation for the magnetic vector potential A can
be written as
2 A = 0 J,
(12)

2.3
(9)

2 #

2
2
vr
vz
vz
v
+
+
+
+
r
z
z
r

Boundary conditions

Due to the symmetry of the computational domain,

only a quarter of the flow domain is considered in the
finite element model. A complete set of the boundary
conditions for the arc is listed in Table 2. The current density is assumed to be of parabolic in the radius,
given by
"

2 #
r
J = 2JC 1
.
(13)
RC
The radius of the cathode spot is defined as
r
I
RC =
,
JC

2
1 vr
v
v
+
+

.
r
r
r
(10)
The constants in the turbulence model equations are
listed in Table 1.
Table 2.

Constants in the turbulence model

where 0 is the vacuum permeability. Eq. (12) results

from the Coulomb gauge A = 0 and the Ampres
law B = 0 J.

where
"

Table 1.

(14)

where I is the arc current, and the average cathode current JC is given to be 3.5107 A m2 in the present
calculations [9] .

Boundary conditions in arc plasma region

Surface

v(ms1 )/P (Pa)

T (K)

(V)

ABB

vr = v = vz = 0

4000

Formula(13)

(/z) = 0

BBCC

vr = v = vz = 0

4000

(/z) = 0

(/z) = 0

CCDD

P =0

(T /z) = 0

((/z) = 0

(k/z) = 0

(/z) = 0

DDEE

vr = v = vz = 0

2000

(/r) = 0

(k/r) = 0

(/r) = 0

EEF

vr = v = vz = 0

3100

(/z) = 0

FA

vr = v = 0

(T /r) = 0

(/r) = 0

(k/z) = 0

(/z) = 0

323

Plasma Science and Technology, Vol.14, No.4, Apr. 2012

2.4

Technique of solution

The governing equations with boundary conditions

are solved using a finite element method. The nonlinear
solution is based on the SIMPLE algorithm. Convergence is declared when the following condition is satisfied,

P L PN m
m1

i=1
i,k
k=1
i,k
< 0.01,
(15)
max
where is a general dependent variable, L and N are
the total number of nodes in the r- and z-directions,
respectively, and m is the number of iterations.

Results and discussion

To validate the algorithm of the model, a comparison is made with BOWMANs measurements [7] in free
burning DC arcs. The temperature contours for an
arc of 2160 A with a length of 0.07 m are plotted in
Fig. 2(a). In Fig. 2(b) a comparison of the calculated
results from the model with the experimental data on
the axial temperature in the arc is shown. As is seen,
the temperature calculated is higher than the measured
one. The possible reason is that the assumption of LTE
is not valid near the cathode spot region. The flow field
is presented in Fig. 3(a). In Fig. 3(b) a comparison in
the axial velocity of the calculated results to the experimental data is shown. It can be seen that both match
well.

Fig.2 Calculated temperatures for a plasma arc of 2160 A

with a height of 0.07 m. (a) Temperature field (K), (b) Axis
temperature as a function of axial distance from the cathode
(color online)

324

Fig.3 Calculated velocities for a plasma arcs of 2160 A

with a height of 0.07 m. (a) Velocity field (ms1 ), (b) Axis
velocity as a function of axial distance from the cathode
(color online)

It is clear from the literature that arc parameters,

such as arc length and arc current, affect significantly
the arc properties and arc-bath interactions in a steel
making EAF. However, as one considers the environmental enclosure in SAF and the high melting point of
MgO, the arc behaviors may be different. In order to
study the differences between EAF and SAF, two cases
with and without limited space above the anode surface
are presented.
The calculated temperature field of a plasma arc of
10 kA with a height of 0.09 m for two cases is shown in
Fig. 4(a) and (b), respectively. Due to the higher current density near the cathode spot, the self-magnetic
compression accelerates the plasma away from the spot,
towards the lower current-density region. This phenomenon dominates the whole structure of the highcurrent free burning arc if it is assumed to be in a
steady state. As is expected, the overall temperature
of the cylindrical region is higher in a limited space,
shown in Fig. 4(b), while the arc radius is almost not
affected by the higher ambient temperature since the
cathode spot radius in both cases is assumed to be the
same. The corresponding flow fields for these two cases
are shown in Fig. 5. Because there is no lateral wall,
the high temperature air flows away along the anode
surface, as shown in Fig. 5(a). In Fig. 5(b) it is shown
that the high temperature air may flow out of the cylindrical space along the lateral boundary or take part in
the circulation with the inlet flow.
The effect of the arc length is shown in Fig. 6. Due
to a relatively small space, the overall temperature appears to be slightly higher for a shorter arc length, as
is seen in Fig. 6(a), and with a larger velocity, shown

WANG Zhen et al.: Arc Plasma Behavior in a Submerged DC EAF for the Production of Fused MgO
in Fig. 6(b). These characteristics of a shorter arc may
lead to a higher efficiency of heat transfer. The arc efficiency here is defined as the ratio of the power absorbed
by the surrounding materials to the total power in the
arc.

Fig.6 Axial distribution of temperature and velocity for

different arc lengths in a range of 5 cm to 9 cm. (a) Axis
temperature as a function of axial distance from the cathode; (b) Axis velocity as a function of axial distance from
the cathode
Fig.4 A comparison of the temperature fields for two
cases, with a current of 10 kA and an arc length of 9 cm.
(a) Without limited space, (b) With limited space (color
online)

Fig.5 A comparison of the velocity fields for two cases,

with a current of 10 kA and an arc length of 0.09 m. (a)
Without limited space, (b) With limited space (color online)

The effect of the arc length on the pressure distribution at the anode surface is shown in Fig. 7. A
maximum pressure appears at the center of the anode. Blocked by the lateral wall, the pressure becomes
slightly higher near the fridge of the anode. It is apparent from this figure that a shorter arc length results in a higher pressure. Such a high pressure means
that the force generated by the impingement of the arc
jet on the bath surface can be very significant. The
arc plasma photographed by JONES et al. [8] exhibited
to be a high velocity turbulent self-constricted jet. A
crater-like depression caused by the arc in the surface
of the bath is clearly shown. The temperature, flow and
current density fields of the bath are then believed to
be significantly affected by the force. The interaction
between the arc plasma and the molten bath is worthy
of further study.

Fig.7 Radial distribution of pressure on the anode surface

for different arc lengths in a range of 5 cm to 9 cm

325

Plasma Science and Technology, Vol.14, No.4, Apr. 2012

Since the heat flux transferred from the arc to the
molten bath plays an important role in the operation
of the furnace, it is necessary to estimate its value and
efficiency. There are four different mechanisms of heat
transfer considered, namely convection, the Thompson
effect, condensation of electrons and radiation [4] . An
integration of these four mechanisms is considered to
be the total effective arc power. It should be pointed
out that the bottom area of the electrode is much larger
than that of the cathode spot. Although the arc instabilities in a realistic operation of DC arc furnaces may
cause the cathode spot to move around irregularly on
the electrode surface [10] , the total effective arc power
is still assumed to be valid here. The effect of the arc
length on both arc power and arc efficiency is shown in
Fig. 8. The Joule heating power of the arc is calculated
by the following equation,
Z
PJ =
Qdv,
(16)
V

a. A model for a DC arc was developed. The predicted arc temperatures and velocities agree well with
the experimental data by BOWMAN.
b. The behavior of arcs in SAF for MgO production
is predicted by the model, including the temperature
field, the velocity field, and the pressure distribution
on the anode surface.
c. The calculated results show that the maximum
pressure at the anode surface is in an order of magnitude of 104 Pa, and the pressure distribution is affected by the arc length significantly. Modeling of the
bath considering impingement of such a jet is worthy
of further study.
d. The circulation of the high temperature air under
the electrode bottom in SAF can lead to a higher arc
efficiency, especially for a shorter arc.

References

where V is the conductive volume of the arc, and Joule

heat power per unit volume Q is calculated by

Q = E J,

(17)

with E the electric field. It is found that the arc power

doesnt increase significantly with the increase in arc
length with a fixed arc current. This is because that
most of the arc power is dissipated near the arc root.
For a short arc the environmental enclosure leads to a
circulation of the air in SAF, so the arc efficiency is
much higher than that in a DC EAF for steel making [11] . Additionally, a shorter arc length leads to a
higher arc efficiency in the operation of SAF.

3
4
5
6
7
8
9

10
11

Fig.8 Effect of arc length on the arc power and arc efficiency

326

Conclusions

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(Manuscript received 13 January 2011)

(Manuscript accepted 29 April 2011)
E-mail address of corresponding author
WANG Ninghui: ninghuiw@263.net