Powder Technology 301 (2016) 608614

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Powder Technology
j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w.e l s e v i e r.c o m / l o c a t e / p o w t e c

Pengaruh komposisi gas dan suhu pada karakteristik fluidisasi bijih besi dilapisi
karbon
Chao Lei a,b, Shengyi He
a
b

a,b

, Zhan Du a,b, Feng Pan a, Qingshan Zhu a,, Hongzhong Li a

State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Complex Systems, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 28 February 2016
Received in revised form 21 June
2016
Accepted 30 June 2016
Available online 2 July 2016
Keywords:
Direct reduction
Deuidization
Carbon deposition
Process
optimization

a b s t r a c t
Untuk mengurangi kadar karbon dalam besi reduksi langsung (DRI) yang
diperoleh melalui dua langkah fl uidized proses reduksi tidur, kami
menyelidiki fl uidization / de fl uidization perilaku bijih besi dilapisi
karbon di bawah komposisi gas yang berbeda dan suhu. Ditemukan bahwa
penting nilai kandungan karbon (Ccritical) diperlukan untuk mencegah agar
de fl uidization meningkat jelas dengan meningkatnya fl suhu uidization,
tetapi sedikit dipengaruhi oleh komposisi gas, sedangkan stabilitas karbon
diendapkan sangat tergantung pada komposisi gas, yaitu ketika fraksi H2 mol
lebih besar dari nilai kritis tertentu, karbon diendapkan tidak stabil dan
akan terus dikonsumsi selama reduksi, yang mengarah ke de fl uidization.
Melalui optimalisasi proses, kandungan karbon di DRI menurun ke b 5 wt.%,
Yang juga jauh lebih rendah dari nilai-nilai dilaporkan 16,5-22,3 berat.%
Dalam literatur.
2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Fluidized beds are ideal reactors for non-blast furnace ironmaking
due to their excellent heat and mass transfer efciency, coke-free
ironmaking and direct use of ne iron ore potential [1,2]. However,
the serious deuidization problem during the reduction of ne iron
ore, caused by the sticking of newly-formed metallic iron at elevated
temperatures, always induces abrupt shut down of the equipment
and hinders the stability of continuous operation in industry [35].
Among various deuidization prevention measures, carbon-coating is
simple, effective, economical and draws more and more attention
from recent researchers [610].
Generally for this method, a two-step reduction process is
adopted,
where pre-reduction process is conducted at relatively low temperatures for coating enough carbon on the surface of ne iron ore
particles, to prevent the deuidization during the subsequent high
temperature reduction process. One of the main problems lies in the
fact that the di- rect reduction iron (DRI) obtained by such process
contains a high car- bon content (16.522.3 wt.%) as reported by
previous studies [9,10], which is obviously too high to be used as the
feedstock of following elec- tric furnace steelmaking process. This can
be attributed to two reasons: (1) the critical carbon content value
(Ccritical) needed to prevent the high temperature deuidization is too
high, e.g., after pre-reduction process, the carbon content of a prereduced iron ore needs to exceed 13
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: 491961198@qq.com (C. Lei), heshengyi@gmail.com (S.
He), duyinyi2008823@126.com (Z. Du), Fpan@ipe.ac.cn (F. Pan),
qszhu@home.ipe.ac.cn (Q. Zhu), hzli@home.ipe.ac.cn (H. Li).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.powtec.2016.06.048

14 wt.% to totally avoid deuidization; (2) carbon accumulation

during the subsequent high temperature reduction process, e.g., the
carbon content of DRI further increased from 13.3 wt.% to 22.3 wt.%
after reduc- tion at 800 C for 100 min as reported by D. Neuschtz
[10].
To solve this problem, it is quite necessary to optimize the twostep direct reduction process. In our previous study [11], the Ccritical
value was signicantly decreased to 3.03.5 wt.% by the optimization
of the
pre-reduction process, based on the investigation of the uidization/
deuidization characteristics of carbon-coated iron ore under a xed
high temperature condition. This is the second paper focused on the
op- timization of the high temperature reduction process to further
reduce the DRI carbon content. In the present study, we investigated
the effects of gas composition and
temperature on the
uidization/deuidization characteristics of carbon-coated iron ore,
and further discussed the op- timized reduction conditions
2. Experiment
2.1. Apparatus and raw materials
Fig. 1 shows the experimental apparatus, where the uidized bed
re- actor is made of quartz, with an inner diameter of 16 mm and a
height of
860 mm. The bed temperature is controlled by a PID controller and
mea- sured by an inserted k-type thermocouple with the accuracy of 1
C. The ow rates of feeding gases are controlled by digital mass ow
control- lers, and the pressure drop of the bed is measured by a
differential pres- sure sensor and recorded by a personal computer.
The measuring range of the pressure sensor is 02 kPa and the
accuracy is 0.5% of the full scale.

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Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the uidized bed apparatus (1-Gas Cylinder; 2-Shutoff Valve; 3-Mass Flow Controller; 4-Fluidized Bed Reactor; 5-Differential Pressure Sensor; 6Thermocouple; 7-Display Instrument; 8-Data Acquisition System; 9-Electric Resistance Furnace).
Chemical composition of the Brazil iron ore.
A Brazil iron ore with the particle diameter of 106150 m was

used as the raw material in the present study. Its true density and
Composition
TFe
Fe2O3
FeO
SiO2
CaO
MgO
Al2O3
bulk den- sity are about 4939 kg/m3 and 2209 kg/m3 respectively,
Weight (wt.%)
68.94
96.80
0.72
1.98
0.10
0.10
while its mini- mum uidization gas velocity (umf) in N2 at 0.30
room
temperature is about
3.2 cm/s. Table 1 shows its chemical composition. N2, H2 and CO of
99.99% purity were used and supplied by Beijing Huayuan Gas
Chemical Industry Co. Ltd., Beijing, China. All the carbon-coated iron
ore samples were prepared by reducing the iron ore under the same
pre-reduction condition, i.e., 1.5 L/min CO-H2 mixture gas with H2
mole fraction of
0.733 at 650 C. Fig. 2 shows the corresponding pre-reduction rate
and
carbon deposition rate. And the umf of such carbon-coated iron ore is
in the range of 3.03.8 cm/s, depending on its composition.
2.2.
procedure

Experimental

The high temperature reduction process was conducted under atmospheric pressure. The uidized bed reactor was pre-heated to 800
C under N2 atmosphere (1.0 L/min, about 29.6 cm/s), then 6.00 g
car- bon-coated iron ore were fed into the reactor (about 1.3 cm
initial bed height) and N2 was immediately altered to the desired
reducing gas (1.5 L/min, about 44.4 cm/s). The used reducing gas was
CO-H2 mixture gas with a xed CO/H2 ratio, which was controlled by
digital mass ow controllers. After the desired time or deuidization,
the reducing gas was switched back to N2 atmosphere (1.0 L/min,
about 29.6 cm/s), and the reactor was removed from furnace and
quenched directly by spraying water on its outer surface to the
ambient temperature under N2 atmosphere. Then the samples were
transferred into zipper seal sample bag full of N2 gas to prevent
oxidation.
The carbon content of samples was measured by a carbon-sulfur
analyzer (LECO CS-344, USA). The reduction degree of samples was
mea- sured by the titrimetric method according the national
standard method of China
(GB 223.7-2002). The off-gas
composition was
Table 1

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analyzed by a gas chromatograph (INFICON 3000 Micro GC, USA). The

uidization behavior was characterized either by the pressure drop
pro- le or by the direct vision. The deuidization time was
determined from the uidization pressure drop proles.
3.
Results
discussion
3.1. Effects of the
content

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change with an initial decrease caused by partial deuidization at the

beginning

and

initial

carbon

Fluidization/deuidization characteristics of carbon-coated iron

ore with different initial carbon content (Cinitial) were rst
investigated dur- ing the reduction at 800 C in CO, to clarify the
corresponding critical carbon content value (Ccritical) needed for the
deuidization prevention.
It was found that the uidization quality increased with increasing
the initial carbon content, e.g., when the Cinitial is b 1.2 wt.%,
deuidization occurs due to the insufcient coating, as shown in Fig.
3(a). Deuidization can be prevented to a certain extent with the
Cinitial of 1.24.55 wt.%, where the pressure drop presents a V type

Fig. 2. Rates of reduction and carbon deposition during the pre-reduction process.

Fig. 3. Fluidization pressure drop of carbon-coated iron ore with different initial
carbon content at 800 C in CO (a-0.75 wt.%; b-1.91 wt.%; c-4.55 wt.%).

of uidization, as shown in Fig. 3(b). When the Cinitial is N 4.55 wt.%,

deuidization can be totally avoided with quite stable uidization in
the whole process as shown in Fig. 3(c). And the average of
uidization pressure drop even increases gradually. Since we did not
nd any ag- glomerates deposited on the upper surface of the
distributor or in the holes on the distributor, such increase of the
pressure drop can be at- tributed to the carbon deposition on particle
surfaces through the de- composition of CO (2CO = CO2 + C). As
shown in Fig. 4, carbon content increases about 30 wt.% after
uidization in CO under 800 C for 2 h.
Therefore, the value of 4.55 wt.% can be considered as the Ccritical
value in CO at 800 C. It should be noted that the Ccritical value of the
iron ore in the present study was greater than the optimized Ccritical
value (3.03.5 wt.%) reported in our previous paper [11]. This is
because under the same reduction condition, Ccritical value will
decrease with in- creasing the H2 mole fraction (xH2) in the CO-H2
mixture gas [11], and the xH2 in this study is 0.733, smaller than that
in our previous paper (0.90.95).
3.2.
Effects
composition

of

the

gas

Fig. 5 shows the uidization behavior of carbon-coated iron ore

with different initial carbon contents (08.13% wt.%) in CO-H2 gas
mixture at
800 C (1.5 L/min, about 44.4 cm/s), to clarify the effects of gas

Fig. 4. Carbon content variation of the carbon-coated iron ore

deposited carbon during reduction at 800 C in CO.

with 5.18 wt.%

Fig. 5. Fluidization behavior of the carbon-coated iron ore with different initial carbon
content in CO-H2 mixture gas at 800 C (-deuidization; -unstable uidization; stable uidization).

composition on the uidization characteristics. There are also three

types of uidization behavior: deuidization, unstable deuidization
and stable deuidization. In this study, the distinguishing criterion of
deuidization and unstable deuidization is to observe whether
com- plete deuidization happens, which can be identied by a
sudden pres- sure drop (about 100200 Pa) in few seconds or
by the visual observation. The distinguishing criterion of unstable
deuidization and stable deuidization is to observe whether partial
deuidization oc- curs at the beginning of uidization, which can be
identied by the oc- currence of a V type change of the pressure
drop in the initial 10 min or by the visual observation. It should be
noted that such distinguishing criterion will bring some error (about
0.15 wt.%) on the critical carbon content value of distinguishing
different uidization behavior, which is acceptable.
It was found that when xH2 is smaller than 0.9, uidization
behavior in such mixture gases is quite similar to that in the pure CO.
Fluidization quality increased with increasing the initial carbon
content, and deuidization can be effectively avoided when the
Cinitial value was N 4.55 wt.%. Moreover, Fig. 5 also indicates that the
change of gas com- position shows little effect on the Ccritical value,
which is equal to
4.55
wt.%
under
different
gas
compositions.
However, when the xH2 is N 0.9, increase of the initial carbon
content does not improve the uidization quality, deuidization
occurs even the initial carbon content is greater than the Ccritical value
(4.55 wt.%), which has not been reported or explained before.
To clarify the reason, carbon contents of pre-reduced iron ore after
uidization at 800 C for 30 min in the gas mixture with different CO/
H2 ratios were investigated and shown in Fig. 6. It was found that gas
composition shows signicant effects on the stability of the deposited
carbon. When the xH2 is smaller than 0.9, the deposited carbon is
quite stable. In all cases, carbon contents of iron ore increase to some
extent after reduction for 30 min, caused by the CO decomposition as
discussed above. Besides, it should be noted that the carbon content
increased as xH2 increased to 0.2. This is because adding a low
content of H2 can en- hance the carbon deposition rate, due to the
occurrence of second reac- tion (H2 + CO C + H2O) [11].
However, when the xH2 is N 0.9, the deposited carbon is not stable
and quickly consumed during reduction. Particularly, after reduction
in H2 for 30 min, carbon content of the pre-reduced iron ore
decreased from 5.18 wt.% to 0.18 wt.%, as shown in Fig. 6. Fig. 7 further
investigates the carbon contents of the carbon-coated iron ore after
deuidization at
800 C in H2. Results indicated that for the samples with the Cinitial
value of 5.18 wt.%, 8.13 wt.%, 14.7 wt.%, the carbon contents after
deuidization decreased to 1.09 wt.%, 1.3 wt.%, 2.2 wt.% respectively,

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Fig. 7. Deuidization time and carbon content after deuidization (Cdef) during
reduction of the carbon-coated iron ore with different initial carbon content at 800 C
in H2.

Fig. 6. Carbon contents of the carbon-coated iron ore after 30 min uidization in the
gas mixture with different CO/H2 ratios at 800 C.

much smaller than the Ccritical value (4.55 wt.%). From the above two
ex- periments, it can be concluded that deuidization under the gas
mixture with the xH2 N 0.9 is mainly caused by the consumption of the
deposited carbon during the reduction process.
Previous study indicated that during the reduction of carboncoated iron ore, the deposited carbon could be consumed by its
reduction reac- tion with FeO [11]. To check this, we investigated the
composition var- iation of pre-reduced iron ore with the Cinitial of
14.7 wt.% after heating in N2 at 800 C for 30 min. Results showed
that reduction reaction be- tween deposition carbon and FeO indeed
happened, which leaded to the decrease of carbon content to about
12.6 wt.%. However, results in Fig. 7 showed that its carbon content
after deuidization was only
2.2 wt.% after reduction in H2 at 800 C for 27.5 min, much smaller
than the value of 12.6 wt.%. This meant that reduction with FeO was
not the main consumption way of the deposited carbon, and there
must exist other reasons leading to the fast carbon consumption
during the reduction in H2.
Cypres et al. [12] once reported that deposited carbon generated
by
the low temperature decomposition of CO had high chemical
reaction activity, which could be gasied by H2 (C + 2H2 =
2CH4). Thus, off- gas composition during the carbon-coated iron
ore reduction at 800 C in H2 was measured, where about 1.652.48%
CH4 was detected depen- dent on the reduction time. This meant
carbon methanation with H2 in- deed happened and could be
considered as the main reason of the fast carbon consumption during
reduction in H2.

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From the above investigations, it becomes clear that gas

composition shows important effects on the stability of deposited
carbon during iron ore reduction, and
further affects
its
uidization/deuidization behav- ior. This can be further explained by
the kinetics and the thermodynam- ics. From the respects of reaction
kinetics, during the reduction in CO-H2 gas mixture, both the
decomposition of CO and carbon methanation re- action could occur,
where the former benets the carbon stability but the latter reaction
would not. And the increase of the xH2 in the mixture gas will
enhance the methanation reaction rate but reduce the CO decomposition rate. So under the CO-H2 mixture gas with high xH2
( N 0.9), the methanation reaction rate is relatively high but the
decom- position rate of CO is relatively low, i.e., the consumption rate
of depos- ited carbon will be faster than the accumulation rate. As a
consequence, carbon contents of iron ore will constantly decrease
during the reduc- tion in such gas composition, leading to the nal
deuidization.
On the other side, from the respects of thermodynamics, Fig. 8
shows the equilibrium state at 800 C for the closed system with
the initial composition of 1 mol solid carbon and 1 mol mixture gas
with different CO/H2 ratios. It can be seen that there also exists a
theoretical critical value (xcritical). When the xH2 is smaller than the
xcritical, solid carbon is stable and will accumulate due to the
decomposition of CO, just as what observed in the above
experiments. However, when the xH2 is greater than the xcritical,
carbon is unstable and will be obviously con- sumed after the system
reaches the equilibrium state. Besides, it should be noted that the
calculated xcritical value in Fig. 8 was 0.77, a little small- er than the
experimental result in Fig. 6(0.9), which might result from the
difference between the simplied calculation system and the real
open system in the present study, and also from the experimental
errors.
As we known, one of the main reasons resulting in the high DRI
car- bon content is the fast accumulation of the deposited carbon
during the high temperature reduction process. For example, D.
only can inhibit the fast accumulation of the deposited carbon, but
also can prevent the deuidization caused by the continuous
carbon consumption.
3.3.
Effects
temperature

of

the

uidization

Fig. 9 shows the effect of the uidization temperature on the

Ccritical. Results
indicated that increase of the
temperature
signicantly raised the Ccritical value, e.g., the Ccritical value at 900 C
was 14.7 wt.%, about three times of that at 800 C (4.55 wt.%). This
could be attributed to the increase of iron adhesion at higher
temperature [13,14].
Fig. 10 shows the uidization behavior of the carbon-coated iron
ore in CO-H2 mixture gas at 900 C. Fig. 11 shows the carbon contents
vari- ation of carbon-coated iron ore with the Cinitial of 14.7 wt.% after
uidi- zation at 900 C in CO-H2 mixture gas for 30 min and
further compares it with that at 800 C.
Results showed that the change of the gas composition at 900 C
per- formed the similar effects on the uidization behavior as that at
800 C. Particularly, there still exists an xcritical. When the xH2 is lower
than the xcritical, gas composition shows little effect on the
Ccritical value (14.7 wt.%), and particle uidization quality increases
obviously with the increase of its initial carbon content. Moreover,
when the xH2 is greater than the xcritical, deuidization still occurs
even its initial carbon content is larger than the Ccritical value, due to
the consumption of de- posited carbon as indicated in Fig. 11.
However, as indicated by Figs. 10 and 11, comparing the
uidization behavior at 900 C with that at 800 C, increase of the
reduction temper- ature mainly induces two effects: (1) under the
same gas composition, the carbon content increment at 900 C is

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Neuschtz [10] once chose 90%CO-10%H2 mixture gas as the reducing

gas, resulting in that the DRI carbon content increased about 9 wt.%
after the reduction at 800 C for 100 min. From the Fig. 6, if we also
choose such kind of re- ducing gas, the carbon content of DRI will
increase by 13 wt.% after re- duction at 800 C for 30 min, which will
denitely lead to a high DRI carbon content.
Therefore, from the respects of process optimization, in order to
re- duce the DRI carbon content, the optimized gas composition (xH2
value) should be a little smaller than the xcritical value, where the CO
decompo- sition rate is equal to or just a little higher than the
methanation rate. So even after long time reduction under these
cases, the DRI carbon con- tent will be kept constant or increase in
quite slow rate, which not

Fig. 8. Molar mass of carbon after the CO-H2-C closed system reaching the equilibrium
at
800 C.

smaller than that at 800 C, e.g., the carbon content increases 12.75
wt.% after reduction at 800 C in CO-H2 mixture gas with the xH2 =
0.4 for 30 min, while the increment is only 6.95 wt.% at 900 C; (2) the
xcritical value at 900 C is 0.85, a little lower than that at 800 C (0.9).
To understand these effects, Fig. 12 shows the equilibrium state at
different temperatures for the closed
system with the initial
composi- tion of 1 mol solid carbon and 1 mol mixture gas with
different CO/H2 ratios. Results indicated that the theoretical xcritical
value decreases with increasing temperature, e.g., the xcritical value
at 900 C is 0.05 smaller than that at 800 C, which is in good
agreement with those of experimental results. Moreover, combining
the experimental results and the theoretical results, the relationship
between the xcritical and the temperature in this study can be
expressed by the tting equation: xcritical = 0.0007 T + 1.265
(800 C b T b 900 C). Besides, when the xH2 is smaller than the
xcritical, the equilibrium solid carbon decreases with increasing the
temperature under the same gas composition, due

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Fig. 9. Effect of the temperature on the Ccritical (-stable uidization; -unstable

uidization).

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Fig. 10. Fluidization behavior of the carbon-coated iron ore with different initial
carbon content in CO-H2 mixture gas at 900 C (-deuidization; -unstable
uidization; - stable uidization).

to the fact that both the CO decomposition reaction and the carbon
methanation reaction are exothermic reaction, and the equilibria
shift towards the reverse direction with increasing the temperature.
Our previous study [11] indicated that the reduction rate at 800
C was quite fast, thus further increase of the temperature to 900
C would not show obvious enhancement of the reduction rate, but
lead to a remarkable increase of the Ccritical value. So from the respects
of pro- cess optimization, 800 C is more suitable in the present
study.
The above experiments investigated the effects of gas composition
and temperature on the uidization characteristics from the respect
of the particle cohesive force. It should be noted that particle
reduction or change of experiment conditions will also inuence the
gas and par- ticle physical properties, such as gas viscosity, particle
diameter, particle density, and further affects the uidization
characteristics.
Generally, such effects of gas and particle physical properties on
par- ticle uidization characteristics are evaluated by the minimum
uidiza- tion velocity (umf). For example, in this study, the umf in N2
at room temperature is about 3.2 cm/s and the operating gas velocity
during re- duction is 44.4 cm/s at 800 C, about 1314 times of the
umf. During the reduction process, increase of the temperature (800
C 900 C) or de- crease of the H2 mole fraction (1 0) will induce
the increase of gas viscosity, further leading to the variation of umf in the range of 1.32.9
cm/
s. Besides, increase of carbon content and reduction of iron ore will

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Fig. 11. Variation of carbon content after 30 min uidization in CO-H2 mixture gas at
800 C and 900 C.

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Fig. 12. Molar mass of solid carbon after the CO-H2-C closed system reaching the
equilibrium state under different temperatures.

increase the particle diameter and decrease the particle density. Base
on the experimental results, such variations of particle properties will
lead to the variation of umf in the range of 3.03.8 cm/s.
From the above calculation, variations of gas and particle physical
properties show relatively small effects on the umf, and will not
induce deuidization under such
high operating gas velocity.
However, under the same reduction condition (800 C, CO-H2 gas
mixture, 44.4 cm/s), deuidization will occur once the metallization
ratio of iron ore (with- out carbon deposition) increases to about
25% [6]. It can be concluded that compared with the particle cohesive
force, the effects of gas and particle physical properties on the
uidization/deuidization character- istics are much smaller in this
study, so their further effects on the Ccritical and xcritical are ignored
in this paper.
3.4. Optimization of the two-step direct reduction
process
The nal optimization aim is to raise the efciency of
deuidization prevention by carbon and reduce the nal carbon
content in DRI on the premise of stable uidization. From the
systematic investigations in the present study and our previous study
[11], we propose two key optimi- zation principles as:
(1) reducing the Ccritical value, which can be achieved through increasing the reduction rate and reducing the carbon
deposition rate during the pre-reduction process, such as by
increasing the temperature or the xH2 in the CO-H2 mixture
gas [11] and through decreasing the reduction temperature;
(2) Balancing the carbon deposition and consumption rates during
the high temperature reduction process. Preferably, the carbon
content of iron ore should be kept constant or increase in quite
slow rate in practice through controlling the reducing gas
com- position, which can be achieved through regulating the
xH2 in CO-H2 mixture gas equal to or a little smaller than the
corre- sponding xcritical value under certain xed temperature.

Based on these principles, the optimized reduction temperature is

chosen as 800 C as discussed in Section 3.3, the suitable xH2 can be
then determined as 0.875, a little lower than the corresponding
xcritical value (0.9) at 800 C based on the experiment results. And the
opti- mized pre-reduction conditions can be chosen at 600 C
with the xH2 = 0.9 in CO-H2 mixture gas, as indicated in our
previous paper [11]. Fig. 13 shows the variations of metallization ratio
and carbon con- tent of the iron ore during the two-step reduction
process under the

Fig. 13. Variations of metallization ratio and carbon content for the iron ore during the
reduction under the optimized operation conditions.

above optimized operation conditions. Results showed that after prere- duction for 16 min, the metallization ratio and carbon content of
iron ore reached 69.5% and 3.86 wt.%, respectively. Then, after the
subse- quent high temperature reduction for 14 min, its metallization
ratio fur- ther increased to 91%, while its carbon content only
showed a small increase to 4.83
wt.%. More
importantly,
deuidization was not ob- served during the whole process.
The above results indicated that through reasonable process
optimi- zation, DRI production with the metallization ratio N 90% can
be pre- pared within 30 min, and its nial carbon content was b 5 wt.
%, much lower than the reported value in literature (16.522.3 wt.%).
4. Conclusion
Fluidization/deuidization characteristics of the carbon-coated
iron ore were investigated in CO-H2 mixture gas at 800-900 C, for
the pur- pose of process optimization. The main conclusions can be
stated as follows:
1) The Ccritical value increases with increasing the uidization
tempera- ture, but is little affected by the change of the gas
composition. The Ccritical value at 900 C is almost three times of
that at 800 C.
2) For the reduction in CO-H2 mixture gas, gas composition shows
obvious effects on the stability of deposited carbon, and further
affects the particle uidization/deuidization behavior. When the
xH2 is greater than a certain critical value (xcritical), deposited
carbon is un- stable and will be constantly consumed during
reduction, leading to the deuidization. Moreover, both the
experimental and calculated results show that such xcritical value
decreases with increasing the temperature.
3) Principles for reducing the DRI carbon content were proposed
through two corresponding processes as reducing the Ccritical
value and balancing the carbon deposition and consumption rates
during the high temperature reduction process. Consequently,
the two- step direct reduction process was optimized, and the
nal carbon content in DRI obtained was decreased to b 5 wt.% in
the present study, much smaller than those reported values of
16.522.3 wt.% in literature.
Notation

Ccritical
critical carbon content for deuidization
prevention.
Cinitial
initial carbon content of the carbon-coated iron
ore.

umf
xH2
xcritical

minimum uidization gas velocity.

H2 mole fraction.
critical H2 mole fraction for deuidization prevention

Acknowledgments
The authors wish to gratefully acknowledge the nancial supports
from National Outstanding Youth Science Fund Project under Grant
No. (21325628).

[6]
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