Council of Scientific and Industrial Research

Partha Sarathi Mukherjee

Barada Kanta Mishra

Priyanka Rajput

Raja Kishore Paramguru

Snigdha Priyadarshini

Chinmaya Kumar Sarangi

Bhagyadhar Bhoi

Pravas Ranjan Behera

Siddharth Kumar Pradhan

Byagyadhar Bhoi

Sambita Sahoo

Subir Kumar Das

The present invention relates to an eco-friendly and single step process for the preparation of high purity iron by using hydrogen plasma in a suitable smelting reactor furnace. Reduction of iron oxide in excess of 99% can be achieved by reducing the iron ore in hydrogen plasma smelting system. The product quality is greatly improved as there is no instance of coke inclusion which otherwise would have carried carbon, sulphur, phosphorous, silica, etc. with it. In addition, this greatly diminishes carbon dioxide emission thereby making the process highly eco-friendly in nature. Apart from these, the process produces water as the only by-product. The process takes care of the green house effect with the non-involvement of gases like carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide during the operation. Thus, the present process is developed to produce high pure iron in a hydrogen plasma reactor without using carbon as reductant which thereby reduces the carbon dioxide emission drastically.

Green process for the preparation of pure iron

Direct reduced iron (DRI) is obtained from iron ore by reduction using microwave assisted low temperature hydrogen plasma. The process includes steps of: (a) loading iron ore onto a sample holder (b) placing the sample holder inside a chamber followed by evacuating the chamber; (c) introducing hydrogen gas in the chamber at flow rate ranging between 100-500 standard cubic centimeters (sccm) followed by heating the sample holder and the iron ore at a temperature ranging between 300-800&#xb0; C., a pressure ranging between 20-100 torr and a microwave power ranging between 500-1500 W to obtain direct reduced iron; and (d) cooling the direct reduced iron obtained in step (c) by flowing hydrogen at flow rate of about 300 sccm.

Green process for the preparation of direct reduced iron (DRI)

Growing community of inventors

Bhubaneswar, India

Partha Sarathi Mukherjee