Development of a Novel Flash Ironmaking Technology with Greatly Reduced Energy Consumption and CO2 Emissions
Despite the dominance of the blast furnace ironmaking process, increasing attention is being paid to the development of new technologies with lower energy consumption and CO2 emissions. At the University of Utah, a novel flash ironmaking technology to meet these demands is under development. This technology eliminates the highly problematic cokemaking and pelletization/sintering steps by directly utilizing iron ore concentrate, which is currently produced in large quantities in North America and elsewhere. This transformative technology is expected to allow significant energy saving and reduced CO2 emissions compared with the blast furnace process. It has been demonstrated that iron of more than 95 metallization can be obtained by reduction with hydrogen or a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen in 2 7 s at temperatures of 1473 1823 K. The development of the technology has gone through the stages of proof of concept and small laboratory flash reactor tests. A large prototype bench reactor that has most of the features of an eventual industrial reactor has been commissioned. In this paper, some details of advances made in the development are discussed.
Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy