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1. INTRODUCTION
As India has progressed towards higher level of growth and greater and more concentrated efforts in the development of industries and manufacturing sector, the iron and steel industry is poised for a rapid growth in year to come. Steel demand in the country has increase at an average rate of 10% and is likely to remain in 10-14% range at least for next decade. In order to meet the steadily growth steel demand in the country , National Steel policy targeted its production capacity to be around 160 mtpa by the year 201718 . The increase in domestic demand will be largely driven by its investment in infrastructure, and its strategy of growth which is enabling the opening up of relatively less explored rural markets. However, the per capita consumption in India continues to remain way below the per capita global average. India is among top five iron ore production countries in the world alongside china, Australia, Brazil and Russia .India has approximately 27 billion tons of iron ore reserves comprising hematite (58%) and magnetite (42%). Government owned NMDC is Indias largest production and export of iron ore, while Sesa Goa is largest private sector producer and exporter of iron ore in the country. While the economic reform and liberalized export regimes has accelerate production and export of iron , the domestic production of iron and steel hasnt kept pace with the iron ore production. India exported about 117 million tons of iron ore in 2010-11 out of which 93% in form of fines .The high level of export of fines are due to couple of reason: one reason being non availability of adequate steel making and agglomeration (sintering and pelletisation) capacity within India and secondly due to high prices of iron ore in the international market driven by demand from china. It has become economical to export, even the historically accumulated dumps of lower grade of fines from Goa/Reddireason. The following salient feature of iron ore scenario in India need to kept in view:Five states namely Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Goa, and Orissa produce over 96% of the iron ore.

65% of total iron ore production is accounted from the four districts namely. Keonjhar (Orissa), belly (Karnataka), Singh hum west (Jharkhand) and Dante Wada (Chhattisgarh). Public sector produces 27% and private sector about 73% of iron ore. Share of captive mine on total production is falling, from 43% in 2002-03 to 20% in 2009-10. Due to variation in quality of ore and operating practice, percentage of fines varies for state to state in range of 48% (Orissa) to as high as 76% (Goa). In India partly due to the sponge iron sector, the overall percentage of lumps usage in steel making (I.e. 47%) is higher than most other countries. India Is only country where over 30% of steel come from the induction furnace sector using sponge iron. Sponge iron plants use only lumps and are generally located in area with accessibility to iron ore mines. As hard ore reserves is depleting day by day, lump generation suitable for blast furnace operation is coming down resulting in large amount of production of fines. Fairly high rate of change in technology for production of steel may lead to changing pattern of use material inputs and feed stock causing signification shift in respectively share of lumps and agglomerated iron ore for hot metal in furnace, which will enable the use of ores which would not be utilize earlier. Technology choice for steel production will contain to be market driven. It is hope that the presence and prospective steel plant in India will used fines based technology so that surplus domestic production is utilize in country. Beneficiation of ore and value addition would also increase the economic efficiency of these processes which will increase and give a further fillip to steel production in India. Therefore, utilization of iron ore fines as well as the low grade iron ore is very important for coming days. In view of this the present study aims to study the behavior of highly siliceous iron ore like Banded Hematite Quartzite.

2.LITERATURESURVEY
2.5 REDUCTION PROCESS:The reduction in iron ore by carbon is known to be controlled by the kinetics of the surface-chemical reactions such as the carbon oxidation by CO 2 and wustite reduction by CO, in addition to the internal and external heat transport mechanisms. The reduction of the higher oxides of iron (hematite

and magnetite) to wustite is comparatively much faster than the reduction of wustite to metallic iron. FexOy (s) + CO (g) = FexO(y-1) (s) +CO (g) CO2 (g) + C (s) = 2CO (g) Where x = 1, 2, or 3 When y = 1, 3, or 4. It was further substantiated that the reduction proceeds along the following sequences:

It was further established that at lower reduction temperatures, the kinetics of the carbon gasification reaction in CO2 controlled the overall reduction rate. Deviations in the rate from the carbon gasification-controlled regime were observed at higher temperatures. This was believed to be due to the influence of the wustite reduction reaction on the reduction. This was because of the lower temperature dependence of the reduction of wustite by CO than the gasification of carbon by CO2. Many investigators have studied the reduction of iron ore. But no literature has been reported of this type of ore

3.OBJECTIVE
The objective of this is to study the reduction behaviour of BHQ. The following parameters have been investigated: 1. Effect of temperature 2. Effect of reduction time

4.EXPERIMENTAL 4.1 Raw materials and pellet making:-

Iron ore was collected from Meghahatuburu mines, Orissa (Fig 1). For the reduction studies, coke powder has been used. The chemical analysis of the ore and proximate analysis of coke was done and these analyses were presented in Table 1 & Table 2. For pellet making, the iron ore was crushed to 100mesh. Pellets (Fig 2) were made by hand rolling adding proper amount of water (~8-9%). Bentonite (2%) was used as binder. Subsequently, these pellets were put in open atmosphere for a day and the dried in an electrical oven (Fig 3) at 110oC for three hours to remove moisture.

Fig 1: Iron ore Table 1: Composition of Iron ore (wt%) Fe2O3 48.33 SiO2 49.59 Al2O3 1.77 S 0.01 P 0.04

Table 2: Composition of coke FC 80.3 Ash 18.5 Moisture 1

Fig 2: Iron ore pellet

Fig 3. Drying oven

Experimental procedure: Reduction studies of the pellets were carried out in a tube furnace (Fig 4), stainless steel tray (Fig 5) was used, this tray was made half full with coke breeze of size (-6+16) # mesh and the weighed pellet was placed centrally on this coke bed and the remaining portion of the stainless steel tray was filled with coke.

Fig 4: Tube furnace

Fig 5: Stainless steel tray

The stainless steel tray along with the sample was pushed to the heat zone of the tube furnace after it reaches the set temperature. After holding it a specified time, it was the removed from the furnace. Subsequently, the weight of the pellet was taken after cooling. The experiments were conducted at 900oC to 1050oC for the duration of 10 to 100 minutes. For each temperature, 10 equal weight samples were taken.

5.RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

4.3 WEIGHT LOSS AFTER REDUCTION The fractional weight loss which is defined as instantaneous weight loss/total weight loss has been plotted with time at different temperatures as depicted in figure 6. The figure indicates that the fractional weight loss increases with time. It also shows that with increase in temperature from 900 to 1000 oC, the fractional weight loss increase. However, at 1050oC, the fractional weight loss decreases. This may be due to some melt phase formation as the ore contains high silica which may hinder the rate of reduction.

Fig 6: Fractional weight loss vs. time Rate equation: For comparing the results of different reduction temperatures, the following rate equation has been considered: Ln (1-fr) =-kt Where, t= time in second Fr = fractional weight k=rate constant Using the above equation, if ln (1-fr) is plotted against the t, the rate constant (k) can be obtained from the slope of the curve for each temperature. This concept has been used for this study to evaluate the rate constant of the chosen temperatures. The rate constant values are given in the Table below: Table 3: Rate constant values T, K k, sec-1 1173 0.00088 1273 0.001 1323 0.00089

The activation energy can be obtained by using the Arrhenius equation as follows k = A0e-E/RT Where, k = Reaction rate constant Ao = proportionality constant E = Activation energy T = Temperature (K) R= Universal gas constant (8.314 J/Mole. k) The plot of lnk vs. 1/T results in a straight line. The slope of the plot is E/R. So activation energy can be obtained by multiplying slope R. The activation energy (E) is calculated to be 3.5 KJ/mole.

6.CONCLUSIONS
1. With increase in time the reduction of pellets increases from 10-100 minutes.
2. With increase in temperature the reduction of pellets increases from

900-1000C. However, at 1050oC, rate of reduction decreases.

REFERENCES
1) KRC research: Weekender, June 11th, 2007, pg. 1-2. 2) KRC research: Weekender, June 11th, 2007, pg. 3-4. 3) Dr. R.H. Tupkary and V.R.Tupkary: An Introduction to Modern Iron Making, pg. 124-129. 4) BasakAnameric and S.KomarKawatra: Properties and features of direct reduced iron, 2007, pg. 63. 5) Prof.L.N.Upadhyaya and Dr.V.K.Saxena, Reduction of iron ore pellets with non-coking coal, IE (I) journal MM, pg. 34-36. 6) M.Kumar and S.K.Patel: Mineral Processing and Extractive metallurgy Review, 29, Characterisation of properties and reduction behavior of iron ores for application.