Ko-ichiro Ohno

Abstract:

Not only in Japan but also all over the world, our research region should tackle CO2 emission from iron making process and quality degradation of raw materials. The Iron and Steel Institute of Japan constantly organizes the countermeasure task force, including both sides of academic and industry, for these problems. For blast furnace operation in low carbon situation from strong pressure of economic and environmental sides, a research society has been established and dedicated. The research society focused on gas and liquid permeability in blast furnace with low reducing agent operation. One of their works clarified the importance about high temperature physical molten properties of slag and iron. Especially, the work reported that wettability between coke and them has a dominant effect. Another research society has begun in order to evaluate a possibility of divalent iron oxide utilization in iron ore sintering process. In Japanese sintering process operation, most of raw material are hematite ore as trivalent iron oxide. The new research society will focus not only on magnetite ore but also on mill scale. Our research group is trying to understand their melting behavior in the sintering process using in-situ observation system. The challenge of biomass utilization for iron making process is one of the biggest keywords for a family-like connection, Gudenau Mafia, between IEHK of RWTH University and our research group. We are well collaborating to research about woody biomass possibility of carbon source for carburization reaction during iron melting behavior. Through this collaboration work, it was found that the woody biomass has advantages of carbon structure and ash content over ordinary metallurgical coke.