How to Claim Insurance on a Sponge Iron Damaged by Rain Water

Instead of relying on total strangers to do your job for you, I'd hire a metallurgist to do the report.

By sponge iron I assume you mean direct reduced iron? If so then have the analysis for percent metallization carried out on it to show quality loss. You should have documentation showing the quality delevered to you. Did it burn?

Ok. The only document i have is the daily stock account, which gives the detail of the daily heat taken alongwith the recovery of the material.what i was looking for , how could i put this on paper in technical terms by way of formulas or equation if any.

There should have been an analysis when you bought or processed the DRI?

The temperature of the pile only shows that it overheated. You need to show the starting and final qualities to the insurance company. Was this made by a gas based or coal based plant?

Normally these raw materials are stored in open yards.How come due to rain they have become not suitable for melting?.

DRI can not be left in the rain unless it has been passivated and even then it is touchy. When it starts to oxidize (rust except rapidly) the pile can even become white hot. At that time it is useless. DRI is a semiprocessed raw material - it is not a natural material.

Firstly, I would like to know where you are located and by what process standard the sponge iron was produced, Midrex, HYL, rotary kiln? The reason for this information is that the chemistry of the sponge will be different with each of the above mentioned processes.

Secondly,

1. Do not melt or put into any heat furnace wet sponge iron as the reoxidation of Fe from water generates hydrogen and there will be the possible disastrous consequences putting into a furnace. I cannot over emphasise this enough.

2. If the sponge iron is still wet of continues to be in a pile more than a meter in height the material will continue to reoxidize and generate heat from the exothermic reaction causing further reoxidation and loss of material, let alone the generation of hydrogen and carbon monoxide.

3. This material, in its present state is not stable and from a product point of view is a total loss. Your insurance claim should be the toal loss of value, plus the shipping cost and the handling cost to stop the reoxidation to stabalize the sponge iron, and all costs related to safety while stabalizing, including personnel safety suits, etc.

4. The quickest and safest way to stop the reoxidation is to spread the material out over an area that will reduce the height by less than a meter, even less is better, and flood with fresh water until there is no further heat generation. (easy to tell is where no further steam is coming off and material is cold.).

Do not pile material any higher than 1 meter and observe any further reoxidation then do it again, but spread out further.

5. The sponge iron is reverting back to the iron oxide state it was in before, as an Fe2o3 and it will not stop reoxidizing til it gets there, either slowly exposed to air or water reoxidizing in the chemical steps it takes. If it is exposed to heat above (a) 140 F in humid conditions it will start to reoxidize. (rusting action) As the exothermic condition becomes more extersive it will continue until it takes off as a fuel. (hence the word-sponge iron)

Please contact me for any further concerns. We are specialists at sponge iron, reduction, reoxidation, handling, melting, etc. with over 40 years experience in the field with every type of process technology as independent consultants. We have presented technology papers worldwide on these aspects, including methodology on safe handling.

We are available for consult. sorry for putting in our contact info CR4 but this is, we consider, a high area of priority.

We are situated in the eastern part of India. The dri produced by way of rotary kiln coal based technology. We have done the process as you told and had melted the dri but we received a burning loss of 70%.what are the points for which i should claim from the insurance company.

Mr. Sauravjain,

Thank you for the further clarification of information and for answers to my questions.

I did not realize before that you had already processed and melted the sponge iron, so I apologize for the, perhaps panic attack and overly causious approach I was taking. I can only say that you are lucky.

I don't understand what you mean by a "burning loss of 70%". Please explain.

Insurance claims that you can discuss with your insurance company:

1. I believe your insurance company will tell you what categories you can claim, as far as safety issues are concerned and additional costs associated with handling above the norm. As we are not aware what coverage you have we cannot specify what they should compensate you for.

2. As far as loss of materials is concerned, you will have to show the differences in normal yield and normal analysis of material you have used in the past, as compared to your yield with this reoxidized materials.

If you have not used sponge iron before and have no reference, you must rely on information from your supplier.

Sponge iron reduced via the rotary kiln method will normally have a lower metallic iron yield than say material yield from a gas based process. Since, normally your hot metal yield will be the metallic iron in the songe iron. As the songe iron reoxidizes, as it did when it got wet, your yield will reduce as well, almost in a linear scale. As an example; the HYL process produces DRI with mainly a Hydrogen gas in a shaft furnace and the reduction furnace operation inherently gives a metallic iron content of around 85%, whereas the Midrex process uses both Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide and their processing methods in the furnace will inherantly result in around 89% metallic content. The rotary kiln processes have a normal metallic content of around 80% or lower, Therefore your yield loss will be the difference. The melting furnace can have a higher yield, if you continue the reduction of the iron in the melting furnace, but economically the production cost is higher than the recovery of the iron.

However, your total loss to productivity will include the increase in power cost (kwh/ton), increase in refractory loss, increase in electrode use, etc., etc., and any other increase in cost to make the hot metal from the DRI. (as we don't know what melting process you are using then we also cannot advise you on further losses.)

Hope this is adequate for your discussion with your insurance activities. Please handle the DRI wityh a bit of care in the future and let us know if you have any further nightmares.

Well, we have 2 nos of induction melting furnaces of 8 tonnes capacity each.By burning loss i mean that we got a recovery of 30% and rest was burnt off i.e. 70%,I think you can call oxidation loss.

We are planning for backward integration as we require 300 tonnes of dri everyday.we are based in India ,eastern region and have no iron ore mines, what kind of technology should we go for as there is an upcoming process known as ITMK3 technology by kobe steel, Poscos finex technology,if any other which we can go for which has a capacity of producing 200 - 300 tones per day(tpd) and the investment is not too high.

please let me also know the cost of the project which will turn out to be economically viable.

As i can read from your advice rotary kiln technology seems to produce lower grade of dri therefore the melting cost of the same would result in higher cost for the company. What according to you would be the best dri we should go for ? We also mix dri produced by rotary kiln coal based with fe content of 78 and metallisation to be 85,ms scrap, pig iron in a ratio. Please advice as to How can we improve on our melting time and gain more yield.

Good day to you Mr. Sauravjain,

1. Your melt time is around 1 hour tap to tap? The burning loss means, I propose, your slag loss from the reoxidized DRI was 70%, therefore you recovered 30% metallic iron from the total of DRI that you fed and your normal DRI is Fe=78 with an 85%Mz, meaning metallic iron = 66.3%???

firstly, the total Fe in your normal DRI is very low and your yield of hot metal will always be terribly low as-is, unless you want to try increasing the reduction in the induction furnace by adding more carbon and some lime (exact % would be determined by total chemistry). but you would lose productivity due to longer melt time, and have to add another induction furnace of perhaps the same size. However your yield could go up to maybe 90% with total Fe up to over 90%, meaning an increase to 82%versus 66. I don't know what you are paying for DRI, but it must be based on MZ and total Fe???

The only way to increase yield, decrease cost, increase productivity is to get or make DRI of a higher quality, higher total Fe, higher Met. Fe, therefore higher yield and less cost in power and electrode use and refractory use, etc. or totally different type processes and/or modifications to existing ones especially the rotary kiln DRI plants. Normally, a Midrex plant will produce DRI of over 91% total Fe, metallic Fe of over 88%, MZ of over 92%, of course all depending on raw ore at the min of 66% Fe. HYL DRI will be a bit lower in each and rotary kiln or rotary hearth DRI a bit lower yet. Something is drastically wrong with your rotary kiln DRI if your norms are as reported here. Your reported yields indicate a slight increase in reduction from raw ore from say 65 to 78 total Fe??? When the only compound they are removing is oxygen. Yuck! Why use it. You can get a better yield and less cost by just using scrap and pig. And with the increase in autos on the roads in India there will soon be an increase in available scrap, especially if the females start driving with cell phones available. A good investment for the future would be scrap processing machinery, car crushing, etc.

Another method to increase yield would be to make steel directly from ore fines and coal/carbon. We could advise on this directly as it is quite a lengthy discussion. Please contact me direct.

The Itmk3 tech is a rotary hearth process which also is used to make metal shot(= to pig) at a cost of 250 to 500 USD per annual ton of capacity. About the same for the VAI +?? Finex making DRI from iron oxide dust in a fluid bed similar to the old Fior/Exxon process. Perhaps the other one you are referring to is the corex process used by Jindahl? All kinds of them out there, but the only ones you could viably use in India would use coal or a carbon sourced tech that would also be of a reasonable cost for your sizes and that would be the rotary kiln with coal, rotary hearth with coal-either T.C.Inc. process or others, T.C.Inc. RBI with coal/carbon, T.C. Inc. modified rotary kiln.

This is becoming a bit commercial, I feel, perhaps if you wish we should take it to a direct level.

Regards

hello,

well the dri which we are using has the following specification-

1.Fe total=91%,Fe metallic= 80, metallization= 87%,FeO= 10, C= 13(considered to be good grade here)

2.Fe total=89%, Fe metallic=78,metallization=85%, FeO= 12.8, C=10(considered to be normal grade)

what kind of yield should we calculate from such a material. we are mixing 70% of dri(388$/mt) ,20% of pig iron(520$/mt) and rest scrap(473$/mt) where 1$= rs.45. Tap to tap time is 2.15 to 2.30 sometime 2.45 hrs. we have 2 number of 8 tonnes of furnaces in which we try to tap 19 tonnes of one sequence and cast it to make billets(573$/mt). what should be the conversion cost from sponge iron to billets?

can u suggest any improvisation in the above mixing or process?

Hi Saurav,

I was trainee for 1 year (1961-1962) at Mukand Iron and Steel works Ltd., Kurla. They had 3 Electric Arc Furnaces and were using steel scrap and were producing steel billets and steel castings. I do not think they had such low yield problem. May be you are having Power Supply problem in your area and you have opted for Coal fired Klin. Many EAF units are using steel scrap as raw material.

as i told we are using induction furnaces, and steel scrap is not available in the market that we can run on a regular basis. we dont have any power supply problem as well.

You can import steel scrap as many units here do it. It is available in Dubai.

Sorry for the late reply, I am travelling for a few weeks.

It seems that the DRI you are using isn't all that bad and I suspect your yields are slightly higher than your metallic iron contents indicated in the DRI since your tap to tap times are over 2 hours. If this is correct (only guessing here with the information) you are reducing some in the furnace with the carbon and FeO.

Are you using any kind of ladle for refining before casting to billets?

We don't know your total process scheme, flows, add mixtures, etc. so difficult to determine any specifics on calc of yields or costs. Costs indicated seem to be rather high. Are these USD?

At this point I still say the methods I mentioned before to make DRI or make steel direct for Indian conditions would be your only choice.

Tom

no we dont have LRF, our process is mixing of dri,pig iron and scrap in a pre determine ration and melting it in the induction furnaces,addition of ferro alloys and tapping the motlen metal in the ladle which is taken to the caster by help of EOT cranes and casting it in conitous caster by passing through tundish.

yes these are in USDs, i have gievn the convers ion of a $ to ruppee.