Smelting of Iron Oxides Using Hydrogen Based Plasmas

As one of the possible innovative steelmaking routes, hydrogen plasma smelting reduction, HPSR, has been examined over almost two decades at the chair of metallurgy, University of Leoben. It showed its potential due to its defining characteristic of no direct CO2 emissions as a result of replacing fossil fuels by carbon free source (H2-Plasma). The present work aimed at showing the potential of H2/CH4 in an up-scaled process as an alternative to fossil fuel in the conventional processes. Some experiments were done to investigate the influence of gases like CO, CO2 and H2O on the reduction behaviour of hydrogen plasma. Continuous feeding of fines ore through the hollow electrode was also conducted in a series of experiments to assess its influence on the plasma arc stability and the reduction kinetics. The characteristics of the process in terms of thermodynamics and kinetics was also examined and discussed within the thesis.