Article ID: ISIJINT-2024-347
For decreasing carbon dioxide emission from iron- and steelmaking industry, hydrogen utilization in the blast furnace has been considered. Iron ore sinter is one of the major iron sources for the blast furnace. It is known that the effects of the hydrogen concentration in the reducing gas on the reducibility and reduction disintegration of the sinter are strong. In this study, the evaluation of the mineral phase of the Mosaic EmBedding Iron Ore Sintering (MEBIOS) sinter and reducibility using a laboratory scale furnace simulated the blast furnace condition with high hydrogen concentration and the experimental blast furnace were carried out.
MEBIOS sinter has higher ratio of the mineral phases, i.e., hematite and acicular calcium ferrite with primary hematite, showing higher reducibility compared to the conventional sinters. The value of JIS-RDI of the MEBIOS sinter decreases with an increase in that of JIS-RI, which is the reverse trend of the conventional sinter. Further, the basket charge test with the experimental blast furnace confirmed that the MEBIOS sinter shows high reducibility under the condition of high hydrogen concentration while the reduction disintegration behavior at low temperature is similar to conventional sinter.