During various steps in the production of steel from the raw iron ore pellets a wide variety of by-products are generated. These by-products are in form of sludges, slags or fine powder and are generally rich in iron oxides. Hence, they have the potential of being recycled back to the blast furnace after having being agglomerated. For agglomerates to be considered suitable as feed material for a blast furnace, they should have sufficient room temperature strength and complete reducibility of iron containing elements without degradation or excessive swelling. Cold bond agglomeration process offers an economically attractive and environmentally safe method for achieving this. In this process, various necessary ingredients are agglomerated using a binder into a form suitable for charging into a blast furnace. The paper presents results of the experiments carried out to study the effect of various parameters on the behaviour of briquettes prepared using iron and steel plant by-products and ordinary Portland cement (OPC). The room temperature properties of the briquettes have been found to depend upon various parameters like: the particle size distribution, composition of the raw materials and processing conditions. The properties of briquettes subjected to high temperature under reducing environment depend upon the temperature of reduction, particle size distribution and composition of the raw material
Godkänd; 1999; 20080328 (cira)