Combustion Behavior of Pulverized Coal Injection in Corex Melter Gasifier

"The COREX process is the first reduction ironmaking technology with coal and pure oxygen to get high quality hot metal, which consumes a lot of high quality lump coal and some coke. In order to increase the utilization of fine coal, reduce coke consumption and enhance the competitiveness of the technology, the combustion behavior of pulverized coal injection in melter gasifier is studied experimentally. The results show that the combustion rate of PCI increases with the increase of temperature. And the combustion rate increases with decreasing coal particle size. Compared bituminous coal with anthracite, the former’s burning ratio is higher than the latter in the same granularity. The combustion effect is remarkable when coal blend of bituminous coal and anthracite with the smaller particle size is pulverized in COREX process.IntroductionThe COREX process is the first reduction ironmaking technology with raw coal and pure oxygen to get high quality hot metal, which consumes a lot of high quality lump coal [1-3]. However, the proportion of lump coal in raw coal is very small, and it is avoidless to produce fine coal because of mechanical coal cutter and storage and transportation process, so it is important to resolve utilization of fine coal in COREX ironmaking process in order to energy conservation and reduce the cost of hot metal [4]. Currently, Coal briquetting technology is adopted to utilization of fine coal in COREX process [5], but coal briquetting system has high investment cost and requires feasible adhesive agent. The pulverized coal injection (PCI) into a blast furnace is being used on a global scale to improve the stability and reduce the cost of blast furnace operations [6]. The successful development of PCI in blast furnace is contributed to pulverized coal in COREX melter gasifier. However, it is different in PCI process between COREX melter gasifier and blast furnace, and the differences are as follows: firstly, The air is injected into blast furnace, which temperature is about 1200 ?, but in COREX melter gasifier the normal temperature oxygen is blasted, so PCI in blast furnace begin burning in blowpipe, but the combustion of PCI in COREX melter gasifier is only in raceway. Secondly, the racway of COREX is smaller than that of blast furnace of the same size. So, the combustion behavior of PCI is complex in COREX melter gasifier, which is not use for reference."