Abstract

A blast furnace (BF) is the dominant process for making iron in the world. The blast furnace is charged with coke and iron burden materials including iron ore pellets, sinter and lump ore. While descending in the blast furnace the charge materials reduce. The iron bearing materials should reduce fast and remain in solid form until as high temperature as possible to ensure reaction contact with reducing gas and iron oxides. This research focuses on the reducibility of iron ore pellet, sinter and lump ore in the blast furnace shaft. The experiments were carried out isothermally with Blast Furnace Simulator (BFS) high-temperature furnace at four different temperatures (700oC, 800oC, 900oC and 1000oC) for 300 minutes. The experimental atmosphere consisted of CO, CO₂, H₂, H₂O and N₂ simulating the conditions in blast furnace shaft. It was found out that lump ore has lowest reduction rate at all test conditions. Iron ore pellets reduce fastest at lower temperature and is bypassed by sinter at higher temperatures. Furthermore, the reduction rate of sinter and iron ore pellets start to resemble each other in higher temperatures.