An Experimental Study on Gas–Liquid Flow and Mixing Behavior in a Copper Side-Blown Smelting Furnace

The side-blown smelting technology has been widely adopted in the smelting of complex copper concentrate. This study investigated the flow field distribution in the copper smelting process in a 10:1 scaled cold model. The flow field distribution, including high-speed injection and circulation mixing zones, was measured, and the mixing energy was introduced to evaluate the effect of different operating parameters quantitatively. The results show that the range of circulation mixing zone is the critical feature in improving the stirring strength of the molten bath, which is mainly affected by the buoyancy work. The relationship between the proportion of circulating mixing zone and buoyancy work conforms to \({{A}}_{\text{c}}\text{ = 4.53}{{ \varepsilon }_{\text{b}}}^{1.78}\) when the gas flow rate increases from 1 to 1.6 Nm³/h and \({{A}}_{\text{c}}\text{ = 8.38}{{ \varepsilon }_{\text{b}}}^{2.30}\) when the liquid height rises from 0.03 to 0.07 m. The number of microscale bubbles will increase with the increase of liquid viscosity, and the liquid surface splashes more frequently at this time.