Iron reduction process using transferred plasma

As global warming regulations are expected to become more stringent by the Kyoto Protocol, the steel industry, one of the representative industries in the view of greenhouse-gas emission and huge-energy consumption, has been strained to prepare for the new environmental protocol. Hereupon, low-carbon technologies for the iron reduction process draw much attention from both academia and industries. At sufficiently high temperature, it is reported that an arc plasma torch system has a higher reduction power compared to the conventional system which uses coke for iron reduction. In this paper, we have studied the arc plasma torch system for the iron production with low-carbon emission; hydrogen is added to the plasma-forming gas to realize the reduction atmosphere; a furnace, composed of a graphite crucible and a refractory wall, is designed to control the process conditions, such as temperature, pressure, and surrounding gas in a water-cooled chamber. The relations between the iron production and the carbon dioxide emission are investigated at various operating conditions of input power, gas flow rate and hydrogen mole fraction.