Graduate School of Environmental Studies
Department of Frontier Science for Advanced Environment

Research Topics

1. Development of iron ore burden for hydrogen reduction process
2. Development of new carbon recycling ironmaking process
3. Evaluation of iron ore agglomerates for next generation blast furnace and their optimization
4. Development of porous iron whisker for hydrogen storage and supply
5. Effective utilization of low-grade resources such as iron ore with high phosphorous and recovery of valuable element
6. Research for carbon neutral of non-ferrous smelting process

Carbon recycling ironmaking

The iron making industry consumes a large amount of fossil fuel derived carbon as heat source, reducing agent of iron ores and carburizing agent of reduced iron. Carbon is an essential element for an efficient ironmaking, although hydrogen is expected to be the substitution. The carbon recycling ironmaking process by circulating CO gas has been already proposed to achieve carbon neutrality. However, the production of hot metal is not considered in this process because CO gas is not utilized as a carburizing agent. New ironmaking process of carbon recover using porous iron whisker by exhaust gas form iron- and steelmaking and production of hot metal using recovered carbon-iron ore composite is proposed in this study. The outline of this idea is shown in the figure.

Evaluation of iron ore sinter for the next generation blast furnace

Reduction of CO2 emission is recognized as an urgent issue in the iron and steel industry. One of the feasible methods may be the utilization of H2 gas to the blast furnaces (BF) ironmaking as a reducing agent. In order to keep the BF condition stable under high H2 operation, it is necessary to understand the effect of H2 and H2O gas on the disintegration behavior of iron ore sinter in the upper part of BF. Therefore, the estimation of the disintegration of sinter under the BF condition is very important. In this study, reduction disintegration behavior of sinter at the temperature from 773 K to 1073 K under high hydrogen condition was examined ant its model was evaluated.