Integration of the Blast Furnace Route and the FINEX®‐Process for Low CO2 Hot Metal Production

The blast furnace is the most important process for the production of hot metal. An integral part of this process route is the coking of coal and sintering of fine ore. The FINEX®-process is a new technology for hot metal production which uses untreated fine ores and coal instead of sinter and coke. This paper deals with the investigation of integration concepts of the blast furnace and FINEX®. Low reduced iron (LRI) and/or reducing gas are/is produced in FINEX® and are/is considered as substitute/s of burden and fuel in the blast furnace, respectively. In the article the overall fuel demand and CO2 emissions for the integration of the blast furnace and FINEX® are shown. For that reason two case studies for the integration are carried out and compared with the base case, that is, the two-independent processes. The CO2 emissions are calculated considering the fuel and electric power consumption of the different cases.