Numerical Investigation of Hematite Flash Reduction-biomass Steam Gasification Coupling Process

Abstract

The flash ironmaking process is a novel ironmaking technology; the direct use of biomass as the reductant and fuel in this process can take full advantage of the heat and syngas produced during the biomass gasification. This study establishes a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics model that incorporates turbulent flow, mass transfer, and heat transfer to describe the complex gas-particle reaction behavior of the hematite flash reduction-biomass steam gasification (FR-BSG) coupling process in an entrained flow reactor to explore its feasibility. The temperature and species distributions in the FR-BSG coupling process are analyzed, and the effects of steam/carbon molar ratio (S/C) and ore/biomass mass ratio (O/B) are investigated. The results show that the reduction degree of hematite particles reaches 76.67% in the residence time of 1.65 s under the conditions of S/C=0.1, O/B=1.0 and T=1673 K. The increase of S/C can enhance the production of H₂ but reduce the molar fractions of H₂ and CO in biomass syngas, which leads to the decrease of hematite reduction degree. A higher reduction degree of hematite and lower carbon conversion of biomass can be obtained at lower O/B values. These results provide a theoretical basis for the use of biomass as energy in flash ironmaking technology.