2021 Volume 107 Issue 5 Pages 325-335
As an innovative measure to mitigating CO2 emissions during ironmaking, the enhancement of carbon reactivity in blast furnaces is promising. It can reduce the temperature of the thermal reserve zone (TRZ), which is among the limiting factors to reaction efficiency in blast furnaces, thereby enabling operation under a low reducing agent rate (RAR). Therefore, reaction behaviors of two types of agglomerates with high carbon reactivity, composite agglomerates (CAs), and Ferro-coke, were evaluated using a softening-melting tester and via large-scale thermogravimetry. Process estimation of the blast furnace using them was also performed using a counter-current reaction simulator. CAs exhibited low-temperature gasification, efficiently promoting reduction by mixing with sintered ores. The carbon-consumption ratios of CAs and Ferro-coke were higher than that of coke. The reactive coke agglomerate, which is reinforced CAs with high carbon content toward reducing the RAR, exhibited the highest carbon reactivity, because of the coupling phenomena between the gas reduction of iron oxide and gasification of carbon. The addition of metallic iron to the CA increased the consumption of carbon and reduction of sintered ores, because of the catalytic effect. A combined use of the CA and Ferro-coke in the blast furnace successfully reduced the temperature of the TRZ by 150°C, offering the potential to decrease RAR by 35 kg/t-HM. Estimation of the distance between carbon and iron oxide or metallic iron in these agglomerates revealed that reducing the temperature of the TRZ by them was closely associated with shortening the distance.
