Original Article

A multiscale numerical approach to investigate interfacial mass transfer in three phase flow: application to metallurgical bottom-blown ladles

¹ Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Corso Umberto I, 40, 80138 Napoli, Italy
² Sorbonne Université and CNRS, UMR 7190, Institut Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, 75005 Paris, France

^* e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Received: 11 December 2025
Accepted: 2 January 2026

Abstract

We use direct numerical simulation (DNS) to investigate mass transfer between liquid steel and slag during a metallurgical secondary refinement process through two reduced-scale water experiments, which reproduce the dynamics seen in an industrial bottom-blown ladle. A container is filled with water and topped by a thin layer of oil, representing the molten steel and slag, respectively. The system is agitated by a bubble plume that impinges on the oil layer and forms an open-eye. A tracer species, dissolved in the water, acts as a passive scalar that is progressively absorbed into the oil layer. Both the hydrodynamics and mass transfer in the system are studied and compared with experiments from the literature for ladles of different size and geometry. The numerical simulation of mass transfer is challenging due to the high Péclet number, leading to extremely thin species boundary layers at the interface. Resolving the boundary layer is prohibitive even with adaptive grid techniques. A subgrid-scale (SGS) boundary layer model was employed to correct the scalar transport equation, allowing us to solve convection-dominated transport on relatively coarse grids. The hydrodynamics is investigated, and we analyze how the resultant flow field governs mass transport. The numerical results recover two flow regimes: a quasi-steady regime at low flow rates with small deformations of the oil-water interface and an atomising regime at large flow rates. Interfacial species transport is determined to be dominated in an annulus surrounding the open eye caused by a shear layer at the oil-water interface. It is observed that we achieve grid-independent macroscopic quantities that match relatively well with those observed in experiments, allowing use of simulation techniques as a complementary tool going forward.