Iron raw material production from solid wastes of integrated iron and steel plant

Iron oxide ore is main input of integrated iron and steel plant. While producing iron steel from ore, wastes occur which include high iron content such as basic oxygen furnace (BOF) sludge, flue dust. There is need to use wastes as an alternative for ores because of decreasing grade of ores and increasing production costs day by day. It makes possible to gain iron steel raw material from these wastes by adding them to sinter mixture as secondary raw material. However, these methods could not be utilized enough in iron and steel industry since they increase cost of iron steel production. For this reason, wastes are exported with low costs or used in out of iron and steel industry with different purposes. Utilizing from these wastes with economic methods will become extremely important issue in near future since decreasing underground resources. Manufacturing iron steel raw material from solid wastes such as basic oxygen furnace (BOF) sludge, flue dust and scale that occur during production in integrated steel plants, have been investigated in this study. These wastes pressed under different pressures and made briquettes after mixed with different proportions and added different quantity of coke during experimental studies. Since the main purpose of the study is to product highly reducible low-cost iron steel raw material, manufactured briquettes were reduced at two different temperature as 1000°C and 1100°C during different reduction periods. So, effect of waste proportions added to mixture, pressing pressure, coke content, reduction temperature and reduction period to reduction percentage have been investigated and optimum conditions have been fixed. It has been found at the end of study that higher reduction percentages were obtained with briquettes which pressed with minimum possible pressing pressure (1 N) and reduced at 1100°C. In addition, it has been found that reduction time or coke content should be increased to get higher reduction percentages at constant reduction temperatures.