Abstract
Accompanying the recent remarkable development of electric furnace steelmaking, there is an increased demand for direct reduced iron. The various methods of direct reduction iron making can be mainly classified into two groups; gas-based process and coal-based process. The gas-based process is very familiar in the world, but the fact that it relies on natural gas as its reductant means that unless the plant is located in a place with cheap access to natural gas, this process will be relatively expensive and reduce the profits from the project.
Recently additional process is developing ; in which carbon composite iron ore pellets are reduced in a rotary hearth furnace. Their reduction rate is very fast, and they are not so severely restricted in location. Because of these points, expanded development of this process can be expected in the future.
In development of this process, it was found that, when the reduction temperature was raised, the pellets were melted by the time of completion of the reduction, and they separated into a metallic iron and slag. If it becomes possible to produce carbon-containing metallic iron with no slag, that will reduce the energy consumption by the electric furnace, which in turn will lower the cost of producing iron.
This paper provides a description of the fundamental study and consideration for rapid reduction and separation by means of the rapid heating of carbon composite iron ore pellets at temperatures above 1300°C, using a small electric furnace.
