Sustainable Mining and Metallurgy

In this paper, the electric melting furnace was used to smelt low-grade DRI, and the expansion test of 100kg was carried out to explore the smelting characteristics of low-grade DRI electric melting furnace, including slag-iron separation effect, molten iron carburizing effect, iron yield, etc., and the design software was used to calculate the power consumption and coal consumption per ton of iron. The experimental results show that the DRI ball always floats above the molten pool during the smelting process due to its loose and porous structure. Under the secondary voltage of 120V, the electrode is always immersed operation, and the brush arc or open arc operation cannot be realized. By adding a mixture of anthracite and DRI from the top, good iron reduction and carburizing of molten iron can be achieved, and the average carbon content of molten iron is 3.09%. Under the low basicity slag type and high slag rate, the average FeO content of the obtained slag is 1.47%, and the average iron yield is as high as 98.84%. The theoretical power consumption per ton of iron required for the production of liquid hot metals by low-grade DRI hot charging is 511kW·h/t, while the theoretical power consumption per ton of iron for cold charging is 770kW·h/t. The direct charging of hot DRI can save energy by about 50%.