TY - JOUR

T1 - A New Methodological Approach to the Characterization of Optimal Charging Rates at the Hydrogen Plasma Smelting Reduction Process Part 1

T2 - Method

AU - Zarl, Michael Andreas

AU - Ernst, Daniel

AU - Cejka, Julian

AU - Schenk, Johannes

N1 - Funding Information: Funding: This research was funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency through COMET program Fundamentals of hydrogen reduction, K1-MET project number 12204396. In addition, this research work is partially financed by the industrial partners voestalpine Stahl GmbH and voestalpine Stahl Donawitz GmbH and the scientific partner Montanuniversität Leoben. Funding Information: Acknowledgments: The authors gratefully acknowledge the SuSteel project’s funding by The Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) and the funding support of K1-MET GmbH metallurgical competence center. The K1-MET competence center’s research program is supported by COMET (Competence Center for Excellent Technologies), the Austrian program for competence centers. The Federal Ministry funds COMET for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation, and Technology, the Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs, the provinces of Upper Austria, Tyrol, and Styria, and the Styrian Business Promotion Agency (SFG). Publisher Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

PY - 2022/7/7

Y1 - 2022/7/7

N2 - The development of a carbon lean steel production process following the concept of direct carbon avoidance is one of the most challenging tasks the iron and steel industry must tackle in just a few decades. The necessary drastic reduction of 80% of the process’s inherent emissions by 2050 is only possible if a new process concept that uses hydrogen as the primary reductant is developed. The Hydrogen Plasma Smelting Reduction (HPSR) of ultra-fine iron ores is one of those promising concepts. The principle was already proven at a lab scale. The erection of a bench-scale facility followed this, and further scaled-ups are already planned for the upcoming years. For this scale-up, a better understanding of the fundamentals of the process is needed. In particular, knowledge of the kinetics of the process is essential for future economically feasible operations. This investigation shows the principles for evaluating and comparing the process kinetics under varying test setups by defining a representative kinetic parameter. Aside from the fundamentals for this definition, the conducted trials for the first evaluation are shown and explained. Several differences in the reduction behavior of the material at varying parameters of the process have already be shown. However, this investigation focuses on the description and definition of the method. An overall series of trials for detailed investigations will be conducted as a follow-up.

AB - The development of a carbon lean steel production process following the concept of direct carbon avoidance is one of the most challenging tasks the iron and steel industry must tackle in just a few decades. The necessary drastic reduction of 80% of the process’s inherent emissions by 2050 is only possible if a new process concept that uses hydrogen as the primary reductant is developed. The Hydrogen Plasma Smelting Reduction (HPSR) of ultra-fine iron ores is one of those promising concepts. The principle was already proven at a lab scale. The erection of a bench-scale facility followed this, and further scaled-ups are already planned for the upcoming years. For this scale-up, a better understanding of the fundamentals of the process is needed. In particular, knowledge of the kinetics of the process is essential for future economically feasible operations. This investigation shows the principles for evaluating and comparing the process kinetics under varying test setups by defining a representative kinetic parameter. Aside from the fundamentals for this definition, the conducted trials for the first evaluation are shown and explained. Several differences in the reduction behavior of the material at varying parameters of the process have already be shown. However, this investigation focuses on the description and definition of the method. An overall series of trials for detailed investigations will be conducted as a follow-up.

KW - arc plasma

KW - arc stability

KW - hydrogen

KW - hydrogen-based metallurgy

KW - iron ore

KW - reduction

KW - smelting reduction

KW - thermal plasma

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85132545559&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.3390/ma15144767

DO - 10.3390/ma15144767

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85132545559

VL - 15.2022

JO - Materials

JF - Materials

SN - 1996-1944

IS - 14

M1 - 4767

ER -