Ironmaking Technology

Introduction offers HYTEMP system. Futhermore,

a bigger DR ironmaking capacity is
Ironmaking capability arguably deter- now available up to around 2 million
mines the strength of the steel industry. tons per year. High carbon DRI (3-
This article is a summary of some papers 4%) also provides more chemical en-
presented at SEAISI Conferences and ergy in EAF steelmaking.
limited to a short description of the iron-
making technologies.
Mini Blast Furnace
Direct Reduction
Blast Furnace is the most popular
Direct reduction process is the only iron- route to produce molten iron for steel-
making technology currently adopted in making. Coke is utilized to reduce
South East Asia. Krakatau Steel of Indo- iron ore. A preheated air is blasted
nesia, Perwaja Steel and into the furnace and after a series of
Lion Group of Malaysia HYL Technology
reaction, molten pig iron is
adopted the technology produced. Several compa-
as they want to make nies in the region have an-
use of inexpensive do- nounced that they are going
mestic natural gas as the to construct their first blast
reductant. The natural furnace.
gas can be replaced by a
coal gasifier to produce A mini blast furnace re-
the reducing gas. quires smaller capital and is
more suitable for small
HYL and MIDREX companies. Typically it pro-
technologies are the leaders in this field. duces pig iron in the range
One major advancement in DR technol- of 370-880 tons per day.
ogy is hot discharging of DRI or HBI The technology is more
which can reduce the steelmaking cost. flexible as it can utilize
MIDREX offers HOTLINK, hot con- lump / iron ore and char-
veyor, and hot container to transport the coal / coke.
hot DRI to the EAF while Tenova (HYL)
PAGE 2

FASMELT and ITmk3 tary hearth furnace where after

the reduction of the iron oxide
FASMELT and ITmk3 ironmaking feed, the DRI pellet or bri-
technologies give a different opera- quette product will be melted
tion flexibility as they can utilize in the furnace. Ideally a FAS-
MELT plant should be
located next to a steel-
making plant.

The ITmk3 process is

similar to FASMELT
except that there is no
melting process and
therefore the product
will be in the form of
pig iron nugget. An
ITmk3 plant can be
placed either at the
low grade iron ore and non-coking iron mine site or near steel-
coal. Both also offer a more envi- making facilities. The iron
ronmentally nugget is an excellent raw ma-
friendly op-
eration com-
pared to the
conventional
blast furnace.

The FAS-
MELT tech-
nology util-
izes iron ore
fines or BF/BOF/EAF dust and
non-coking coal to produce molten terial for EAF or BOF steel-
iron which can be processed fur- making.
ther in EAF or BOF. It uses a ro-

ELECTRIC ARC FURNACE—

 PAGE 3

COREX and FINEX facility. Therefore, lower invest-

ment and production costs are ex-
pected.
COREX technology is another alter-
native ironmaking technology. A DRI compactor then transforms
Glob- the reduced
a l l y, iron into
m o r e lump iron. A
than 30 melter gasi-
million fier will turn
tons of the lump ore
h o t into hot
metal metal and at
are pro- the same
duced time the re-
annually ducing gas is produced and piped
using this new route of ironmaking back to the fluidized-bed reactors.
technology. Briquetted or pulverized coal is
Like FASMELT and
FINEX Technology
ITmk3, this technology
can use low grade iron ore
and non-coking coal as
raw materials.

COREX takes lump iron

ore or iron ore pellet while
FINEX uses fine ore.
Fluidised-bed reactors of
FINEX are where the fines
are preheated and reduced.
The ability to utilise fines means charged into the melter-gasifier.
there is no need to install sintering
References
Bohm, Christian, et. al. (Siemens VAI).
2008. Start-Up of POSCO 1.5 FINEX
Plant and COREX C-3000 Baosteel
Plant. Paper presented at SEAISI
Conference.

Minitec Minitechnologies. 2007. Mini

Blast Furnace– the Best Approach for
Hot metal Production in Small Unit.
Steel Times International Vol.31 No.2.

Ravenscroft, Christopher (Midrex

Technologies). 2008. The growing
world of DRI—MIDREX Project Up-
date. Paper presented at SEAISI Con-
ference.

Seki, Kosuke and Tanaka, Hidetoshi

(Kobe Steel). 2008. Changes in Para-
digm—Development of Iron & Steel
Industry by Applying Coal Based DR
Processes: FASTMELT® & ITmk3®.
Paper presented at SEAISI Confer-
ence.

Villa, Andres G (Tenova) . 2007. En-

ergy Savings and Benefits in the Elec-
tric Arc Furnace from High Carbon
DRI. Paper presented at SEAISI Trav-
elling Seminar.