Jeong-Whan Han

Sintered ore used as blast furnace burden materials is produced by mixing iron ore, coke, and limestone, then burning the coke and sintering the iron ore with the combustion heat. Among the coke charged, A particle size of 0.25 mm or less has an insignificant effect as a heat source and adhere to the surface of other materials to inhibit the reaction between oxygen and raw materials, thereby decreasing the quality of sintered ore. Therefore, to increase combustion efficiency, it is necessary to reduce the ratio of coke breeze in the charged coke. In this study, theoretical calculation, experiment and simulation were conducted to investigate the possibility of size classification by drag force in the process of dropping coke after being transported through a belt conveyor. The height of belt conveyor was at 1m, and velocity of the belt was 1.5, 2.3, and 2.6 m/s, which were considered as experimental variables. After falling, the distribution of coke particle size according to the horizontal travel distance was confirmed, and a fall trajectory prediction formula model was created through the drag model of polydisperse system and compared with the experimental and analysis results.

Employing post-combustion technology in the converter, using the sensible heat of the hot metal and the oxidation reaction heat as a heat source, is known to compensate for insufficient heat in the converter process. However, most studies on post-combustion have been conducted using subsonic nozzles, whereas actual converter processes use supersonic nozzles. Therefore, research on the combustion behavior of supersonic jets is needed. In this study, experiments and analyses were conducted using a converter simulator and a supersonic nozzle to investigate the effect of nozzle height on the post-combustion behavior. The reaction was set to complete combustion, with an O2gas flow rate of 150 L/min blown through the upper lance and a CO gas flow rate of 300 L/min blown at the bottom of the simulator to represent the surface of the molten metal. The combustion reaction of CO gas was calculated to be rate-controlled by reactant mixing. The nozzle heights were set to 250, 380, and 530 mm from the surface of the molten metal. Post-combustion analysis showed that the lowest gas velocity was observed under the condition of the highest nozzle height of 530 mm, and the high temperature and reaction zones were widely distributed in the lower region. Therefore, to facilitate heat compensation to the molten metal, it is necessary to control the gas velocity of the molten steelgas interface slowly.

In the ironmaking, sizes of raw materials such as iron ores and coke must be adjusted for subsequent process in the blast furnace. The depletion of high grade iron ore in recent years necessitates a technology that can utilize low-grade fine iron ores. Thus, steelmakers have been studying the sinter-briquette complex firing process that employs a method of charging the sinter feed together with briquettes made of fine iron ore. In this process, larger briquettes increase the briquette productivity per unit time but decrease the green strength of briquettes and they can break during transportation and charging. Thus, the briquette shape is very important. Therefore, in this study, we simulate a twin roll briquetting process using the DEM analysis and compared the compressive force distributions in the briquette for different aspect ratios. This study is a new attempt, because research cases by numerical methods on the same or similar systems are very rare. Consequently, the optimal aspect ratio is 0.5 at briquette height 20 mm, 2.0 at 30 mm, and 1.5 at 40 mm. Also, the average compressive force increased in proportion with the pocket height at the same aspect ratio. Therefore, to increase the pocket depth for high productivity, the pocket height must also be increased for obtaining high strength briquettes.