Effects of Bath Depth and Eccentricity on Mixing Phenomena in Shaking Ladle

Water modeling experiments were carried out to investigate the mixing time and fluid flow phenomena in a shaking ladle, which is widely used in production of low and medium carbon ferromanganese and ferrochrome and also other metallurgical processes. Mixing time was determined by electrical conductivity probe method. A new concept of CSS-MT (critical shaking speed based on mixing time) was defined, which was different from the previous CSS-WH (critical shaking speed based on wave height). And the influences of bath depth and eccentricity on the CSS-MT were studied. The results showed that the mixing behaviors in shaking ladle can be categorized into shallow water type and deep water type, and the mixing efficiency of the former is poor and should be avoided in the industry practice. For the deep water type, the CSS-MT increases with increasing of bath depth and is approximately 15 rpm greater than the CSS-WH obtained from Ishii’s empirical formula. A larger eccentricity is helpful to decrease the critical shaking speed within certain limitations which is 30 mm; however, it is useless for increasing the eccentricity when it is above the limitation.