Analysis and Evaluation of Material Flow in Different Steel Production Processes by gPROMS-based Simulation

Abstract

High-energy consumption and strong dependence on coking coal have greatly restricted the development of China’s iron and steel industry, the analysis and evaluation on low-coke or non-coke alternative blast furnace iron production process like oxygen blast furnace (OBF) and COREX become more and more important. In this study, firstly, we established two thermodynamic process models of iron production process based on the commercial simulator gPROMS, and then we constructed two iron and steel production processes by using the simulation results of the above two iron production processes, they are integrated steel mill (ISM) with OBF, ISM with COREX respectively. By analyzing and evaluating the conventional ISM, ISM with OBF and ISM with COREX, we can obtain the material flow of ISM with OBF and ISM with COREX have changed significantly in comparison with the conventional ISM. Moreover, the OBF iron production technology and its iron and steel production process can be used in coking coal shortage and lower electricity price areas for temporarily reducing the pressure of coking coal shortage. While, the COREX iron production technology and its iron and steel production process can be used in coking coal coking coal shortage and higher electricity price areas.