Regular Article

Evaluating the behavior of catalyst coated nut-coke in blast furnace conditions

¹ R&D, Tata Steel Ltd., Jamshedpur, Jharkhand 831001, India
² A-F Blast Furnace, Tata Steel Ltd., Jamshedpur, Jharkhand 831001, India

^* e-mail: pritesh.garg@tatasteel.com

Received: 28 November 2020
Accepted: 12 March 2021

Abstract

For efficient blast furnace ironmaking, it is desired to have low reducing agent rate, primarily coke rate. Developing technology to improve reaction efficiency of the blast furnace is extremely important as it has the potential to allow a decrease in the reducing agent rate as well as CO₂ emissions. The reaction efficiency of blast furnace can be improved by lowering the Thermal Reserve Zone (TRZ) temperature; which is also the starting temperature of coke gasification reaction. In present study, nut-coke has been coated with in-plant waste, consisting mainly of iron oxide and calcium oxide, as catalyst. There was a clear increase of 10 points in the reactivity of coated nut-coke. The coated nut-coke have been subjected to non-standard high temperature experiments simulating blast furnace conditions with reducing gas consisting of CO, CO₂ and N₂ to capture the effect of catalytic coating on the onset of gasification reaction. The high temperature experiments carried out advise the following: i) A drop of 100 °C in the reaction beginning temperature of catalyst coated nut-coke as compared to non-coated one ii) A typical calculation shows that the lowering of reaction beginning temperature corresponds to a potential carbon rate savings of about 2.5 kg/ton of hot metal (thm). Furthermore, in a trial conducted at blast furnace with charging catalyst coated nut-coke, it has been observed that the carbon rate during the trial period was 3 kg/thm lower than the base period. The findings of blast furnace trial agree with that of the experimental one.