A Water-Based Heat Pipe for Molten Steel Applications in a Tundish

In the continuous casting of steel shapes, a tundish feeds the molten steel alloy into oscillating moulds. Therefore, a better knowledge of some of the parameters of the steel in this phase of the process will lead to better quality with more productivity and in a safer environment. There are many control parameters to be measured in the tundish, especially on a continuous basis, yet in this project we are focused on the following 3 main ones that are the basics of tundish metallurgy: the temperature of the steel, the thickness of the slag, and the composition of the steel.;A viewing tube capable of withstanding the intense environment of the steel tundish enables one to obtain information about temperature, slag thickness and composition of the melt on a continuous basis. This probe based on heat pipe technology has been designed and fabricated and tested in two different environments. One was in gaseous environment in a natural gas filled furnace. The other environment in which the heat pipe has been tested was in a molten aluminum bath. The results of the first experiments showed that the heat pipe is capable of extracting 23 kW at a heat flux of 0.5 MW/m2 while in the next set of tests the heat pipe could not overcome the film boiling limitation. This was a result of the internal design of the pipe, thus, some design modifications are suggested to solve the problem.