Abstract
One of the major challenges for Europe’s future steel production will be minimizing the inherent process emissions in the production of crude steel based on iron ores. In this case, mainly the reduction of CO2 emissions is a focus. One promising process to overcome these problems is the hydrogen plasma smelting reduction (HPSR) process. This process has been studied for several years already at the Chair of Ferrous Metallurgy at Montanuniversitaet Leoben. The work presented focused on the stability of plasma arcs in the DC transferred arc system of the HPSR process. The stable operating plasma arc is of utmost importance for the future development of the process. The major objective is the definition of the most favorable conditions for this kind of arc. Therefore, tests were conducted to define fields of a stable operating plasma arc for multiple gas compositions and process variables. For several gas compositions of argon, nitrogen, argon/nitrogen, argon/hydrogen and nitrogen/hydrogen, fields of stability were measured and defined. Besides, the major influencing parameters and trends for the fields of stability were evaluated and are shown in this work.
Highlights
Among the most important factors for the future of the European steel industry is decreasing the specific CO2 emissions per ton of steel
The present study investigated the behavior of the transferred DC arc in the hydrogen plasma smelting reduction (HPSR) process
The result is the presentation of the evaluated data in so-called arc stability maps and fields of arc stability
Summary
Among the most important factors for the future of the European steel industry is decreasing the specific CO2 emissions per ton of steel. CO2 emissions have, with a share of 86% (in the year 2018: industry, fuels, forestry and other land use) of the total greenhouse gas emissions, serious consequences on Earth’s flora and fauna. This 86% is equal to 43.7 Gt of CO2 equivalent [1]. The aforementioned reduction of 80% is, without further processing of the off-gas, not reachable (e.g., carbon capture and utilization (CCU)). To solve this problem, the smelting reduction of iron oxides using hydrogen plasma smelting reduction (HPSR) could be an alternative production route. The process has been studied at Montanuniversitaet Leoben in Austria since 1992 [6,7,8,9]
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