The top-blow injection technique of a gas–solid mixture through a circular lance is used in the Mitsubishi Continuous Smelting Process. One of the inherent problems associated with this injection is the severe erosion of the hearth refractory below the lances. A new configuration of the lance to form an annular gas–solid jet rather than a circular jet was designed in the laboratory scale. With this new configuration, solid particles leave the lance at a much lower velocity than the gas, and the penetration behavior of the jet is significantly different than with the circular lance in which the solid particles leave the lance at the same high velocity as the gas. The results of cold model tests using an air-sand jet issuing from a circular lance and an annular lance into a water bath showed that the penetration of the annular jet is much less sensitive to the variations in particle feed rate as well as gas velocity than that of the circular jet. Correlation equations for the penetration depth for both circular and annular jets show agreement among the experimentally obtained values.
