Technology
Conference
New furnaces at Kobe Steel may revolutionize iron making
作者：1 发布时间：2010-03-19 文字大小：【大】【中】【小】
To the untrained eye, it was just a pile of metal. But a shipment of iron nuggets that arrived at Kobe Steel Limited's Tokyo head office in late January may have heralded a revolution in the world's steel industry that some are hoping will help save the planet.
The unremarkable looking nuggets, each 5 to 25 millimeters in diameter, were the fruition of 15 years of research and development, originally sparked by a botched experiment by Kobe Steel workers in 1994 that does not use the blast furnaces that have dominated the industry for centuries.
The new furnaces are nearly 50 times faster and can use cheaper coal and lower quality iron ore than the traditional process. Crucially, Kobe Steel says, carbon dioxide emissions are reduced by about 20%. Industry insiders hope the technology can help square the circle of reducing carbon dioxide emissions while allowing rapid industrialization in emerging economies such as China and Brazil.
The revolutionary iron was produced on January 12th 2010 at a new plant in Minnesota, United States, which was jointly built by Kobe Steel and Steel Dynamics Inc. At the heart of the new process is a rotary hearth furnace that is 60 meters in diameter. Low quality iron ore and low cost, ordinary steam coal are used to produce high purity iron nuggets. The high quality coal used to make the coke which powers a blast furnace is unnecessary.
Production only takes 10 minutes compared to an average of eight hours in a blast furnace and results in much reduced carbon dioxide emissions. Although the rotary hearth furnace produces only one-sixth of the output of a large blast furnace, it requires relatively little investment to build, which the technology's proponents say will suit emerging economies.
Kobe Steel's technology, if widely adopted, would create a new market for low grade, low value iron ore which cannot be used in blast furnaces. Abandoned mines might find a new lease of life. That would cool down the overheating iron ore market.
Source from www.asahi.com
The unremarkable looking nuggets, each 5 to 25 millimeters in diameter, were the fruition of 15 years of research and development, originally sparked by a botched experiment by Kobe Steel workers in 1994 that does not use the blast furnaces that have dominated the industry for centuries.
The new furnaces are nearly 50 times faster and can use cheaper coal and lower quality iron ore than the traditional process. Crucially, Kobe Steel says, carbon dioxide emissions are reduced by about 20%. Industry insiders hope the technology can help square the circle of reducing carbon dioxide emissions while allowing rapid industrialization in emerging economies such as China and Brazil.
The revolutionary iron was produced on January 12th 2010 at a new plant in Minnesota, United States, which was jointly built by Kobe Steel and Steel Dynamics Inc. At the heart of the new process is a rotary hearth furnace that is 60 meters in diameter. Low quality iron ore and low cost, ordinary steam coal are used to produce high purity iron nuggets. The high quality coal used to make the coke which powers a blast furnace is unnecessary.
Production only takes 10 minutes compared to an average of eight hours in a blast furnace and results in much reduced carbon dioxide emissions. Although the rotary hearth furnace produces only one-sixth of the output of a large blast furnace, it requires relatively little investment to build, which the technology's proponents say will suit emerging economies.
Kobe Steel's technology, if widely adopted, would create a new market for low grade, low value iron ore which cannot be used in blast furnaces. Abandoned mines might find a new lease of life. That would cool down the overheating iron ore market.
Source from www.asahi.com
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