Effect of incremental utilization of unground sea sand ore on the consolidation and reduction behavior of vanadia–titania magnetite pellets

Abstract

In the iron and steel industry, improving the usage amount of New Zealand sea sand ore as a raw material for ironmaking can reduce the production costs of iron and steel enterprises to a certain extent. In this paper, New Zealand sea sand ore without any grinding pretreatment was used as a raw material, oxidized pellets were prepared by using a disc pelletizer, and the effect of sea sand ore on the performance of green pellets and the metallurgical properties of oxidized pellets was investigated. The effects of sea sand ore on the compressive strength, falling strength, compressive strength of oxidized pellets, and reduction performance were mainly investigated. X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) patterns and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) analysis methods were used to discuss the influence of sea sand ore on the microstructure of the pellets’ oxidation and reduction process. As the amount of sea sand ore used increased, the compressive strength of green pellets was gradually decreased, and the falling strength of green pellets and the compressive strength of oxidized pellets were gradually increased. When the amount of sea sand ore used was 40%, the reduction swelling index of pellets was 16.31%. The increase of sea sand ore used made the reduction of pellets suppressed and the reduction rate decreased. When the amount of sea sand ore used increased to 40%, the reduction degree of sea sand ore pellets was only 60.06%. The experimental results in this paper provide specific experimental data for the large-scale application of New Zealand sea sand ore in the blast furnace ironmaking process.