ECCM 2010

IV European Conference on Computational Mechanics

Palais des Congrès, Paris, France, May 16-21, 2010

Heat transfer model for boron carbide

manufacturing process by carbothermal route
S. Sarkar1 , M. P. L. N. Rao2 , G. S. Gupta2

1 Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, IIT Madras, India, sabita.sarkar@iitm.ac.in

2 Department of Materials Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India

Boron carbide (B4 C) is extensively used in nuclear reactor due to its high neutron absorption area,
low thermal conductivity and low density. Among various production route, born carbide is produced on
large scale through carbothermal reduction of boric acid by petroleum coke in graphite resistance furnace
[1]. However, production of boron carbide (B4 C) by carbothermal reduction route is not yet understood
properly. Here a mathematical model is developed to study the boron carbide process by carbothermal
route. In this processes a heat resistance cylindrical furnace with inner diameter of 450mm and length of
360mm is simulated. A schematic diagram of the cross sectional view of the furnace is shown in figure
1.

Figure 1: Schematic view of the cross section of the furnace

Details of the experimental setup is given elsewhere [2]. In this process, heat is supplied for the
reaction by passing a massive current through an electrode situated at the centre of the furnace and sur-
rounded by the reactive mixture such as petroleum coke and boric acid. Boron carbide is produced by
reduction of boron oxide by carbon. The most agreed mechanism of the formation of boron carbide
reaction [2] is

2B2 O3 + 7C = B4 C + 6CO [∆ H = +29,901 kJ/kg] (1)

There are many physical and chemical phenomena like vaporization, decomposition, condensation
and recrystallization that may occur during boron carbide formation. However it is assumed that the
total effect of these phenomena on heat transfer is negligible as they are highly interdependent and
coupled to each other. In the present study, the mathematical model is developed based on the following
assumptions.

• The mixture is treated as continuous medium.

1
 • Advection due to the by-product gases are assumed to be negligible.

• Variation in mixture density with temperature is not considered as there were not enough data
available in the literature.

• The reaction has taken place and the boron carbide is formed wherever the temperature has reached
the reaction temperature.

Energy balance equation is solved using Fluent 6.3 to get the temperature distribution within the
furnace while mess was generated in gambit 2.4 pre-processor. Rosenland approximation was used to
account the radiation effect in the heat transfer model. At the electrode surface heat flux (q) was specified
as
P
q= (2)
2πri L
where, P is the power input, ri and L are the radius of the electrode and length of the electrode. At the
top surface of the furnace which is open to the atmosphere, atmospheric temperature was specified as
the boundary condition. Adiabatic conditions were adopted in rest of the boundaries. Molar specific
heat was calculated based on weighted mole fraction averages of the mixtures whereas weighted volume
fraction averages are used to calculate the thermal conductivity of the mixture.

Priliminary simulations were carried out for the input power of 27.96 kWh. Similar kind of trend is
observed in the predicted temperature profile from this model as in the experimental hot model [2]. The
effect of different electrode size and the mixture composition are also considered in this study.

References

[1] High temperature materials and process, A. Tekin, G.Goller, C. Toy and C. K. Gupta, 15 (1996) 117-122.
[2] Int. Journal of Refractory Metals Hard Materials, M.P.L.N. Rao, G.S. Gupta, P. Manjunath, S. Kumar, A.K.
Suri, N. Krishnamurthy, C. Subramanian, 27 (2009) 621-628.