Jose Carlos D Abreu

Abstract:

Presently, the production and consumption of DRI are continuously increasing, as a consequence of a specific condition of the NG market, generated for the economic impact assigned to the shale gas extraction technology. Considering this context, DRI can thus effectively improve the BF, EAF and LD converters' productivity and, consequently their competitiveness. In this work, the results of a cooperative research between PUC-Rio University and a Brazilian mining company are presented. Laboratory-scale simulation tests, using RD commercial pellets and typical industrial operational parameters of a bench market RD shaft furnace, were conducted and planned using statistical and factorial analysis. In the simulated experiments, the following three regions of the DR shaft furnace were considered: Reduction, Transition, and Cooling zones. Basically, three stages were considered in the research development: step one, which analyzed the reactions and equations concerning pellet metallization and carbon precipitation; step two, where the experiments focused essentially on the definition of the carburization kinetic equations occurring in the Transition and Cooling zones; and finally step three, which aimed to develop the "METCARB" computational program, conceived to mathematically simulate the metallization and carbon reactions along the height of the furnace. At last, an industrial case was presented in order to compare to the "METCARB" outputs.