Is sub merged arc furnace route of making pig iron by using 100% iron ore fines feasible? Is it cheaper to produce from SAF route than BF route for captive consumtion who needs around 70-100 tonnes of pig iron on a daily basis?
Re: Sub merged Arc Furnace Route of Making Pig Iron?
08/30/2011 7:38 AM
Typically no. The fines will be sucked away by the exhaust as soon as arc is struck, if you can even strike an arc on them. I have tried machine shop chips for re-melt and found that unless they are highly compressed, they go up in form of dust to the collectors as well.
Maybe someone else has had different experience and will chime in.
Re: Sub Merged Arc Furnace Route of Making Pig Iron?
08/31/2011 12:31 PM
Firstly, if you want only 70 to 100 tons per day, you would be in a better financial shape if you just bought the pigs from the open market, as the capital intensity of building a plant, BF or arc furnace will be extraordinary.
Let's find out first some info on the background so we can see where we are going and choose the right path. There will be a lot of questions, so if you wish to have some good guesses send some good info.
What are you going to make?
what are the iron oxide fines that you have now, where did they come from and what is the chemical and physical analysis?
what equipment do you have or can get, new/used?
what infrastructure is available, water, transportation, roads, labor, power, etc.?
do you have access to coal or coke or natural gas, petro coke or any other fuel or reducing agent?
In my opinion there might be some alternatives to making 100 tpd pig iron or the end product steel or whatever you are thinking of. But let's not put the cart before the horse right now, please send the info.
You can send the info through this mechanism or (I prefer) to establish a direct dialogue.
Let me know
Tom Coyne
T.C.Inc.
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Thomas J. Coyne, Jr., President, T.C.Inc., (an international project development/consulting firm).
Re: Sub Merged Arc Furnace Route of Making Pig Iron?
09/03/2011 1:47 PM
May i ask if this is an academic exercise or a real project?
If it is an academic exercise, shouldn't you be researching the answers by yourself, as it is your future. And the answers could be just an opinion, based on the information you have given. For a complete report, you should expect to employ experienced people acting to guide you.
1. Making pig iron at this low rate, and using conventional technology, such as a BF complex, I don't believe can be justified from a capital cost or an operating cost point of view. I basically feel the same about using a sumerged arc furnace.
2. what do you mean by fines would be sintered? In other words why would you consider doing that?
3. Is the power source a private captive power plant? I lived in India for 4 years and never found public power to be that inexpensive.
4. The Fe total is extremely low for any operation and should be beneficiated to a higher amount depending, of course, on the next processing step. Also the silica and phos and sulfur are quite high and have to be lowered, again depending on the next step. Methods of lowering them and raising the Fe means adding grinding, an increase in power cost and capital for the circuit, as well as separation. Is the Fe magnetite or hematite? Materials prep. here is going to determine what next steps from a cost standpont you should take.
5. I would say that a submerged arc fce at 6 MVA will not do the job, as it is going to require 3 times the power to smelt your iron ore, as it is, plus a high grade carbon source such as coke or low ash coal @ 1.5 tons carbon per ton of iron. You will require also oxygen for lancing and the methane gas for hot heel starts and supplemental fuel.
6. There are alternative technologies to consider for that small an annual tonnage. But I cannot discuss these at this forum. Please contact me directly to discuss further.
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Thomas J. Coyne, Jr., President, T.C.Inc., (an international project development/consulting firm).
Re: Sub Merged Arc Furnace Route of Making Pig Iron?
08/31/2011 1:16 PM
Yusef1-iron oxide is either Fe2O3 or Fe3O4 and it could be FeO, all forms of the stuff and dependent on where it comes from or if it has been previously used. At any rate iron in an oxide form must have a reductant to become pig iron or steel. The reductant in a BF is usually coke and the fuel in the blast is usually coke or coal fines/dust or natural gas perhaps. In any kind of electric furnace the power to reduce and make pig iron/steel would be about 3 times that of the BF. Or the feed could be pre-reduced to DRI then melted like scrap.
It goes on much further in detail, but we need to know what he is doing and why.
Tom
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Thomas J. Coyne, Jr., President, T.C.Inc., (an international project development/consulting firm).
Re: Sub Merged Arc Furnace Route of Making Pig Iron?
08/31/2011 7:14 PM
Oh right...I was thinking of iron filings which need to be melted into ingots. This would not need a lot of coke added. I would have a hard time imagining a better method to reduce iron oxide into iron than an old style blast furnace like you can see from the highway when you drive past Hamilton, Ontario. But, yeah, you need llotsa coke for that. (I used to drive up and get shovel the file coke into bags for my blacksmithing. Since I quit blacksmithing, I find little use for it.
The Dark Ages Recreation group I am vaguely associated with smelts bog iron. Google DARC and see what they are up to. The intention is to duplicate what the Vikings did in Newfoundland a thousand years ago.
I think I would be really interested in what the OP comes up with.
Cheers.
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If it was easy anybody could do it.
Sub Merged Arc Furnace Route of Making Pig Iron?
Re: Sub merged Arc Furnace Route of Making Pig Iron?
