Cover Slide

Slide 2- Brief History

Good morning Dr Pocock and Fellow students.

My name is Christopher Perumal and my colleague here is
Kashmeel Bisseru.
The metallurgical process we will be presenting today is the
Blast Furnace Iron Production. Which converts Iron ore into
high purity iron metal used for steel production which is
beyond the scope of our presentation.
There are two process routes available for the production of
steel products, the blast furnace with oxygen steelmaking and
the electric arc steelmaking route. Blast furnace processes
usually produce flat products and use coke and coal as the
reductant sources and sinter, pellets and lump ore as the ironbearing component. BFs produce 940 mln ton , EAF 442mln
It is speculated that the production of iron from iron ore began
sometime after 2000 B.C. in South Asia where iron found use
in weapons and various tools. This was a consequence of it
replacing bronze due to it being harder and durable when
alloyed with carbon. Therefore, iron formed the material basis
of human civilization in Europe, Asia and Africa.
The next milestone in the production history is that of wrought
iron produced by blacksmiths during the Iron Age. This
involved heating iron ore in a charcoal fire and then removing
the pasty mass in order to hammer it. This would compact the
metallic particles.
By the late middle Ages, European iron makers had developed
the blast furnace (large, countercurrent, vertical, chemical
reactor) in which a blast of air was used to intensify
combustion. Molten cast iron (which typically contained 3 to
4.5 % carbon) would be produced at the base of the furnace
and directly cast into molds. Interestingly, pig iron was coined
during this time because the molten iron running into a sand
trough which would feed smaller troughs resembled a sow
suckling a litter of piglets. The cast pig iron could be used to
produce pots, pans and many other goods. Over the course of
the 20th century, heath diamters increased by three to four
times, with the annual production pf increasing 30 to 40 fold.
This is because the ore burden developed from using lump ore
and coke to sinter and pellets. The reductant developed as
well, from only using coke to using injectants through the
tuyreres.

Slide 3- Raw Materials

Steel production requires a certain quality of hot metal with

compositions of silicon, manganese and phosphorous within
specified ranges and high temperatures. The performance of
blast furnaces is increased by charging iron ore in the form of
sinter rather than directly as ore. The sintering process
consists of mixing iron ore with coke breeze followed by a
combustion source to promote surface melting of the ore

particles. Between 7 and 10 % coke breeze is used and the

mixture is spread on a travelling grate and ignited by a bank of
gas burners firing downwards from an ignition hood
Slide 4 Raw
Materials
Slide 5 Raw
Materials
Slide 6 Blast
Furnaces

A blast furnace can be described as a countercurrent chemical

reactor in which the charge of the raw materials of limestone,
coke, sinter and iron ore flow down the shaft whilst the hot
blast air which are gases are fed up the furnace length.
Industrial size furnaces are usually between 20 to 25 m high
and 6 to 14 m in diameter (Gilchrist, 1989). The blast furnace
operates at temperatures ranging between 870 and 1550

and is controlled by the rate at which air is blasted and

the amount of coke that is charged into the furnace (Habashi,

1986). It takes the raw materials about 6 to 8 hours to react
and descend to the bottom of the furnace (Ricketts, 2010).
There are different zones that the length of the furnace can be
divided into and they include: the hearth, raceway, bosh, belly,
lower shaft and upper shaft. Each zone represents a particular
temperature range but also can be identified by the nature of
the reactions that occur within it.
The charge is usually fed by a conveyor system that uses a
skip bridge as the transporter. The charge is fed into a charge
hopper which regulates the delivery of the charge along with
the pressurized gas seal system which manifests itself in the
form of a double bell.
Due to the high temperatures present in the furnace, the
inside walls of the structure are refractory lined and it must be
ensured that no reactions with the slag constituents will occur
that may cause erosion of the walls. The metal and slag layers
that are produced after the reactions sit in the hearth of the
furnace and therefore need to be removed. A taphole is a
means of obtaining the molten iron and the slag. The taphole
is built into the refractory lining of the blast furnace. Hot
molten iron is generally tapped every three to five hours into
ladles or refractory lined railcars for transportation to the
subsequent parts of the process such as the desulphurization
plant.
In terms of the hot blast air which is preheated in the stoves
and then delivered through the bustle pipe which provides a
regulated flow of air delivery into the tuyeres. The tuyeres are
a cooled copper conical pipe numbering up to 12 in smaller
furnaces and up to 42 in bigger furnaces though which preheated air( up to more than 1200C) is blown into the furnace.
After the reactions have occurred typically the off-gases
contain harmful emissions and dust particles which cannot be
just vented to the atmosphere as it would be in breach of strict

environmental legislature. Hence the furnace has closed gas

uptake pipe structure situated at the top that will transport the
gas via a downcomer to a dust catcher and a Venturi washer
that aims to clean the gas such that it can be used elsewhere
in the plant.