Investigation of in-flight reduction of magnetite concentrate by hydrogen

ABSTRACT

In this study, hydrogen reduction of in-flight fine particles of magnetite ore concentrate at constant heat flux condition has been investigated, experimentally and numerically. A 3D turbulent mathematical model was developed to simulate the dynamic motion of these particles and also progress of the reaction. An experimental set-up was made up to evaluate the simulation. The fabricated set-up contains a vertical furnace, a ceramic tube and a handmade powder feeder. There was an excellent agreement between the prediction results and the experimental data. Our simulation and also the experimental data showed a large fraction of the inlet particles traps in the reactor. This is an important issue, should be solved in an industrial scale of the process.

KEYWORDS:

• In-flight reduction of iron ore
• hydrogen reduction
• magnetite concentrate
• nucleation-growth model
• simulation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors acknowledge the financial support from the Golgohar Iron Ore and Steel Research Institute, Sirjan, Iran  [Grant Number 92.2501].