Jo Feb 17, 2022

Ri Sok Chol, a section head at the Faculty of Metal Engineering employed genetic programming (GP) to derive a CaO-SiO2-Al2O3 slag viscosity equation and presented an algorithm for it.

Slag viscosity is a key property that determines the stability and productivity in the metallurgical furnace operation, and it is of great importance in understanding the fluid dynamic of molten slags and slag-metal reaction kinetics during the pyrometallurgy process.

Up to now, there have been many experiments to measure, and models to estimate slag viscosity. Viscosity models can be classified into explicit models, structural models, and miscellaneous models according to the way in which they are connected to the description of slag structure.

A slag viscosity equation described with only slag composition and temperature was successfully derived by genetic programming (GP).

The viscosities of CaO-SiO2-Al2O3 system slag can be simply and expediently calculated in a wide range of compositions and temperatures by using the derived viscosity equation.

The average relative error between the values obtained by the equation and the experimental data used for its derivation is as low as 17.1%. To evaluate the accuracy of the viscosity equation of CaO-SiO2-Al2O3 system slag, experimental data and results calculated by many researchers and not used for the derivation of the viscosity equation were compared, and a reasonably good agreement was demonstrated between the results calculated by viscosity equation and other researchers’ experimental and calculated data. The calculation of viscosity showed higher accuracy than previous models.

His essay “Derivation of CaO-SiO2-Al2O3 System Slag Viscosity Equation by GP” was carried in SCI Journal “Journal of Mining and Metallurgy, Section B: Metallurgy”.