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Thermodynamic analysis and experimental verification of the direct reduction of iron ores with hydrogen at elevated temperature

  • Metals & corrosion
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Abstract

Hydrogen-based direct reducing iron production (H-DRI) possesses great potential for energy saving and emission reduction of greenhouse gas in metallurgical industries. Although the relevant research has been studied since long, the thermodynamics and process of reduction by pure H2 in a broad temperature range are not well understood. Hence, we conducted a thermodynamic analysis of different iron ores (hematite and magnetite) reduced by H2 at 300–1700 K to study the phase-composition variation with temperature. Subsequently, we explored the reduction process of iron ores by pure H2 at 1173 K and 1673 K, respectively, to further investigate the influence of ore species and temperature on the microstructure evolution of ultimate metallic iron. The results reveal that excessive H2 favors the transition from FeO to Fe in the last reduction step, and the magnetite achieves a higher reduction extent than hematite. Temperature above 837 K is beneficial for avoiding the occurrence of the disproportionation reaction and promoting the FeO → Fe transition to improve the reduction extent. Meanwhile, the higher volume mismatch and the associated stresses between hetero-phases at 1673 K contributed to the formation of large-size pores or cracks. The higher content of dense Fe layers formed in magnetite at relatively lower temperature served as barriers against the diffusion of O, leading to the retention of abundant closed pores in the iron matrix. The oxide impurities cannot be reduced by H2 at 1673 K instead translated into oxide inclusions due to their low oxide-formation free energies, of which the coagulation was facilitated by increasing temperature as the higher velocity of migration and movement. With this study, we aim to provide theoretical direction for the practical application development of H-DRI.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (U1908227, U1860205 and 52172023), the Key Program of Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province (2021CFA071), the Special Project of Central Government for Local Science and Technology Development of Hubei Province (2019ZYYD076).

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  1. Shaofei Li, Huazhi Gu and Ao Huang have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The State Key Laboratory of Refractories and Metallurgy, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, 430081, People’s Republic of China

    Shaofei Li, Huazhi Gu, Ao Huang, Yongshun Zou, Shuang Yang & Lvping Fu

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  1. Shaofei Li
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Correspondence to Yongshun Zou.

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Li, S., Gu, H., Huang, A. et al. Thermodynamic analysis and experimental verification of the direct reduction of iron ores with hydrogen at elevated temperature. J Mater Sci 57, 20419–20434 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-022-07855-9

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