Properties of Dust Particles Sampled from Windboxes of an Iron Ore Sintering Plant: Surface Structures of Unburned Carbon

Abstract

Aiming to understand the formation mechanism of dioxins in the iron ore sintering process, dust samples obtained from some windboxes of a commercial iron ore sintering plant have been characterized with a powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), by the transmission electron microscope (TEM) equipped with an electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS), and by the temperature-programmed desorption (TPD) and temperature- programmed oxidation (TPO) techniques. The elemental and XRD analyses reveal that the content of the Cl present in the samples ranges from 0.075 mass%-dry to 5.1 mass%-dry and tends to be higher at smaller dust particles, and that some of the Cl exists as KCl with the average crystalline size between 40 nm and 50 nm. Dust samples also contain a significant amount of unburned carbon, and the smallest dust particles, <500 μm, show the highest C contents in many cases and consist partly of C, K, and Cl elements. The TPD and TPO experiments exhibit that the dust samples have several types of oxygen functional forms on the carbon surface, and the proportion of carboxyl and lactone/acid anhydride groups, which can be partly decomposed into CO2 and carbon active sites at 150 to 500°C, tends to be larger at smaller dust particles. On the basis of the above results, the formation mechanism of chlorinated organic compounds including dioxins is discussed in term of interactions among HCl (and/or Cl2), metallic chlorides, and carbon active sites.