8th International Congress on Science and Technology of Ironmaking - ICSTI 2018

Many efforts have been made to investigate the softening-melting (SM) behaviour of ferrous burden material as it governs the formation of the cohesive zone (CZ) inside the ironmaking blast furnace (BF). Usually, the SM property of individual lump ore is thought to be inferior to iron ore sinter, however, it has been demonstrated that results for a mixed burden of ≈80% sinter and ≈20% lump ore are equivalent to the results obtained using only sinter. In this work, the high temperature interaction between a sinter of high basicity and Newman Blend lump ore from Australian is studied through interrupted SM tests at a number of temperatures. The structural and metallurgical aspects of the interaction are examined, e.g., the variation of ferrous burden voidage is tested using synchrotron X-ray CT scanning, and the metallurgical interaction studied using optical and scanning electron microscopy. Furthermore, the mechanism for the interaction between sinter and lump ore is identified, and factors controlling the reaction are discussed. Key words: softening-melting, interaction, lump ore, ironmaking