What Is the Role of the Tundish Nozzle in Steelmaking?
Oct 22, 2025
The tundish nozzle is an essential component in the steelmaking process. It not only controls the flow rate and velocity of molten steel and safeguards its quality, but also helps balance temperature and pressure parameters within the system. As one of our company's core products, tundish nozzles play a vital role in continuous casting. To help customers better understand and apply them effectively, the following provides a detailed explanation of the functions of tundish nozzles during steelmaking.
The tundish nozzle evenly distributes molten steel poured from the ladle into multiple mold strands. For multi-strand continuous casting machines, the multi-nozzle tundish design ensures that molten steel is properly diverted, allowing several molds to operate simultaneously and maintain balanced casting conditions.
During multi-heat continuous casting, the molten steel stored in the tundish serves as a critical buffer. When the ladle is replaced, the steel within the tundish allows casting to continue without interruption, ensuring smooth operation of the continuous casting process. This greatly improves production efficiency and minimizes downtime caused by ladle changes.
The molten steel level in the ladle is relatively high, generating strong impact forces and large variations during pouring. In contrast, the tundish maintains a lower and more stable steel level. The tundish nozzle therefore helps reduce pressure and stabilize the steel flow, preventing excessive scouring of the solidifying shell in the mold. This not only protects the mold and extends its service life but also improves the quality and surface integrity of the cast billets.
The design of the tundish nozzle works in conjunction with cover powders, long nozzles, and other protective systems to minimize exposure of molten steel to the atmosphere, thereby preventing reoxidation and contamination. This helps maintain the purity of molten steel and enhances the overall quality of the final steel products.
Beyond serving as a flow channel, the tundish nozzle also performs important metallurgical functions. By incorporating flow control and refining devices such as dams, weirs, argon bubbling, and ceramic filters, the tundish system can further purify molten steel and reduce non-metallic inclusions. Additionally, when combined with technologies such as induction heating or plasma heating, the tundish nozzle helps precisely control molten steel temperature, enabling the production of different steel grades with specific process requirements.
In summary, the tundish nozzle plays multiple critical roles in the steelmaking process-including flow distribution, continuous casting, pressure reduction and flow stabilization, protection, and metallurgical enhancement. It is an indispensable component of the continuous casting system, contributing significantly to improved steel quality, casting stability, and production efficiency.
Anyang Changtai Silicon Industry Co., Ltd. is a comprehensive manufacturer specializing in the design, processing, and sales of zirconia high-temperature products. If you require zirconia high-temperature products, please email us at: zhang@ayctgy.com. We will respond to your inquiry promptly upon receipt.
