A Comprehensive Static Model of an Iron Bath Smelting Reduction Process with Thick Slag for Alumina-Rich Iron Ore

Alumina-rich iron ore is a widely existed polymetallic deposit in the nature, and it has a high comprehensive utilization value. Because the alumina and iron contents of alumina-rich iron ore vary from each other, there are many different measures and processes to recover iron and alumina from the various kinds of alumina-rich iron ore. In the blast furnace (BF) ironmaking process, the alumina content in the iron ore fines used in sintering making all over the world is mostly less than 2%, but 2.5–5.5% in India.1–3) As the less-slag operation is promoted in the recent blast furnace operation, the Al2O3 in the BF slag increases and thus would cause troubles such as increasing pressure drop in the dripping zone and increasing the gas flow resistance in the cohesive zone. The study by Sunahara4) indicates that the optimum composition of high Al2O3 slag is high MgO and low CaO/SiO2. The recovering of Al2O3 from slag with high content of MgO is difficult due to the appearance of 20CaO·13Al2O3·3MgO·3SiO2 (Q phase) in the slag,5) so the slag is used as raw material for other industrial production, such as cement production, which would bring certain resource waste of Al2O3. Alumina-rich iron ore with 40% or more Al2O3 is first processed into Al2O3 and red mud by combined Bayer process or pure Bayer process,6) and then the ferric oxide and the residual Al2O3 in the red mud is to be recovered by other A Comprehensive Static Model of an Iron Bath Smelting Reduction Process with Thick Slag for Alumina-Rich Iron Ore