On the Potentiality of Production of Low S & P Hot Metal by VRDR-SAF Process

Blast furnace technology is still the large scale indus-trial producer for hot metal and is expected to remain in the main stream for number of years. Coking coal reserves are depleting hence, there is a necessity for developing alternative processes using abundantly available non-coking coal. The new iron making processes avoid the depe-ndency of high quality metallurgical coal hence the deve-lopment has resulted in large number of processes. The important amongst them are COREX, Direct Iron Ore Smelting Process (DIOS), Hi Smelt Process etC, NML has developed a process using noncoking coal as reductant to produce sponge iron in a vertical retort direct reduction furnace developed at NML And the sponge iron so produced is hot charged to sub-merged arc furnace for production of liquid iron containing low sulphur and phosphorus. It has been demonstrated that the liquid iron can be produced with low sulphur (less than 0.02 % and phosphorus less than 0.06% ) and can be successfully and economically produced by utili-sing this process. The paper describes the details of the same.