Kinetic analysis of iron carburizaiton during smelting reduciton

The most serious issues in the world are a large amount of energy consumption and generation of greenhouse effect gas from iron-making industry. The main factors of energy consumption are reduction of iron ore and carburization of reduced iron at high temperature. If it is possible to accelerate the rates of iron ore smelting reduction and the succeeding carburization at low temperature, the technology will be very valuable to lower energy consumption in the blast furnace. It is well known that phenomena during smelting reduction are very complicated and the mechanism has not yet been clarified. Therefore, "in-situ" observation of smelting reduction and carburization of iron sample were carried out in our previous work. It was confirmed from the results that iron was carburized without a direct contact with carbonaceous material during smelting reduction. The mechanisms of this unique carburization were discussed and it was obtained a conclusion that formation rate of Fe-C particles caused by smelting reduction mainly determined the overall rate of iron carburization reaction.