AbstractMolten steel produced in an electric arc furnace is poured into a ladle and transported to a continuous casting machine. In order to minimize the heat losses during transportation, the inner surface of the ladle is lined with refractory material. Also, this inner surface needs to be preheated to prevent the cooling of the molten steel below the casting temperature. The paper describes a dynamic model for a ladle preheater with the objective of predicting the heat‐up time. It has been validated by experiments performed on an existing ladle in an iron and steel mill. The results predicted by the model are sufficiently accurate for practical use. The model is further used to investigate several important operating parameters that are expected to shorten the heating time, conserve energy and increase the productivit