Abstract
Smelting reduction processes have been developed in the past as an emerging alternative for hot metal production. What they have in common is that coal is directly used; thus, coke making can be avoided in comparison to the blast furnace. They have been developed to overcome the high energy and emissions levels intensive processes of coke making and sintering. Once very-low-quality raw materials are used, larger amounts of coal are needed with a consequent increase of the CO2 emissions. For all these reasons, this kind of plants is mainly located in those regions where the raw material quality is low or where the material supply is difficult. By the type of smelting stage applied, three process groups can be distinguished: in-bed processes, in-bath processes, and electric smelting. The shaft furnace technology is applied for the reduction of pellet and lump ore, whereas fluidized bed technologies and cyclones are used for fine ore input. Coal gasification is allowed through a reaction with oxygen and iron ore in a liquid state. The heat is used to smelt iron, and the hot gas is transported to the pre-reduction unit to reduce the iron oxides that enter the process. In the present chapter, the main employed available smelting reactors are described. Those plant solutions employing pre-reduction of iron ores are described. Various plant configurations are analyzed. In particular, those solutions globally adopted for the large CO2 abatement volumes are underlined.
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Cavaliere, P. (2019). Smelting Reduction: Most Efficient Technologies for Greenhouse Emissions Abatement. In: Clean Ironmaking and Steelmaking Processes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21209-4_7
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