Praxair Technology, Inc.

Gary Thomas Vardian

William John Mahoney

Michael F Riley

Adrian Christian Deneys

Bryan R Bielec

Stephen A Manley

Larry E Cates

William Eric Slye

Ronald Holmes

Al Zoladz

Michael Francis Riley

Larry Cates

A stream of hot oxygen is formed by providing a duct and a fuel lance movable axially within the duct, flowing gaseous fuel out of the lance into the duct, mixing it in the duct with gaseous oxidant, flowing the mixture out of the duct into an atmosphere which is hot enough that it ignites the mixture without aid of an ignition source other than said atmosphere, and combusting said mixture in a flame that does not extend into said duct; then moving the lance so its fuel outlet approaches the duct exit orifice so that the base of said flame moves inside said duct to the fuel outlet; and then moving the lance to draw the fuel outlet and the flame attached thereto away from the exit orifice into the duct; and increasing the flow rate of gaseous oxidant in said duct, so that combustion of fuel within the duct heats uncombusted oxygen which emerges as a stream of hot oxidant.

Reliable ignition of hot oxygen generator

A method and apparatus for forming internally shrouded supersonic coherent jets comprising an inert gas, such as pure argon and argon/oxygen mixtures. This method and apparatus can be employed to produce low-carbon steels with a top lance in basic oxygen steelmaking.

Injection method for inert gas

A method of injecting oxygen into a melt located within a metallurgical furnace having a heated furnace atmosphere in which oxygen and fuel is injected into 1 or more nozzles having passageways of converging-diverging configuration under choked flow conditions to produce supersonic jet or jets discharged from the passageways. Fuel is injected into internal circumferential locations of the passageways so as to impart a structure to the jets being discharged that have an outer circumferential region containing a mixture of fuel and oxygen and a central region containing essentially oxygen. Such a structured jet upon discharge interacts with the furnace atmosphere to create an outer shear-mixing zone in which the outer circumferential layer mixes with the heated furnace atmosphere and auto-ignites to produce a flame envelope surrounding a supersonic jet of oxygen. The jet of oxygen and flame envelope can be directed against a melt contained within the metallurgical furnace for injection of oxygen into the melt.

Oxygen injection method

A method for operating a vacuum vessel with a coherent jet wherein vacuum conditions are established within the vessel and an anchored or attached flame envelope resulting from subsonic velocity fuel and oxidant is provided around at least one supersonic gas stream.

Method for operating a vacuum vessel with a coherent jet

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Indian Trail, NC, United States of America

Gary Thomas Vardian