Abstract
High-carbon ferromanganese has been produced by electric arc furnace in Japan. But its production cost has increased because of a speedy rising of electricity cost and Japanese ferromanganese has lost competitiveness in the international market. So, for the purpose of decreasing its production cost, high-carbon ferromanganese production tests (production rate = 1. 9-4. 3t/d) were performed using a melting test furnace with coke packed bed injected with highly oxygen enriched air and a large quantity of pulverized coal. Moreover the operation indices of a commercial plant of 170t/d in production capacity were estimated by heat and mass balance model, and following results were obtained.
1) In this test, high-carbon ferromanganese of [Mn] = 75% was produced stably using the coke blended with 56% non-coking coal, with coal rate of 1502kg/t, coke rate of 1087kg/t and productivity of 3.11t/(d·m3).
2) The total coal consumption of the commercial plant of this method is estimated to be less than that of the blast furnace in spite of higher fuel rate because a large quantity of pulverized coal is used in this process. Through these investigations, this process seems to have a prospect of being available as a ferromanganese production process instead of electric furnace method.
