To counterbalance the negative characteristics of the blast furnace, many attempts were made in the past to achieve a more efficient, more economic and/or more environmentally friendly production of hot metal. Two important technologies in this respect are the COREX®- and FINEX®-processes. Starting from different raw materials both methods use a two-stage process concept. Besides different pre-reduction stages of the iron ore to direct reduced iron (a shaft furnace in the COREX®, a fluidized bed cascade in the FINEX®-process), both methods adopt a meltier gasifier for final reduction and melting. The pre-reduced material (called HCI, hot compacted iron) is reduced in the melter gasifier by two different mechanisms, the direct and indirect reduction. Due to the novelty of the meltier gasifier process, the exact metallurgic reactions are yet not completely understood. The objective of this thesis was to explicate the metallurgic processes during the reduction of the HCI and, thus, to describe the effect on the increase in the total reduction degree and the proportion of direct and indirect reduction. Reduction experiments were performed with HCI in a reducing gas mixture at 1100 °C with varying gas concentrations and residence times during the first experimental series. In two further series coke or char were added as solid carbonaceous reducing agent to study the effect on direct reduction mechanism. An increase in gas concentration as well as the addition of a solid reducing agent consistently led to an increase in the total reduction degree. The addition of char results in a higher raise of the reduction degree as observed with coke.