Direct reduction of iron ore by biomass char

By using thermogravimetric analysis the process and mechanism of iron ore reduced by biomass char were investigated and compared with those reduced by coal and coke. It is found that biomass char has a higher reactivity. The increase of carbon-to-oxygen mole ratio （C/O） can lead to the enhancement of reaction rate and reduction fraction, but cannot change the temperature and trend of each reaction. The reaction temperature of hematite reduced by biomass char is at least 100 K lower than that reduced by coal and coke, the maximum reaction rate is 1.57 times as high as that of coal, and the final reaction fraction is much higher. Model calculation indicates that the use of burden composed of biomass char and iron ore for blast furnaces can probably decrease the temperature of the thermal reserve zone and reduce the CO equilibrium concentration.

Load reduction sintering for increasing productivity and decreasing fuel consumption

The technical and economical indexes and the physical properties of load reduction sintering processes with the supporting stands of installation at different height levels （300, 350, and 400 mm）： in a sintering bed were studied under the same conditions of raw material, bed height, and sintering parameters. Sintering pot tests with different bed heights and fuel ratios of the mixture with or without supporting stands were performed to decrease the fuel consumption. The airflow rate through the sintering bed was measured with an anemoscope fixed on the bed surface to reveal the effects of supporting stands. The utilization of load reduction sintering can improve the permeability of the sintering bed, and the airflow rate through the sintering bed is increased. When the stand height is half of the sintering bed, the productivity increases by 27.9%, and the drum index slightly decreases. Keeping at the same productivity level with normal sintering, the utilization of load reduction sintering can decrease the solid fuel consumption by 9.2%.

Large aperture phase-coded diffractive lens for achromatic and 16°field-of-view imaging with high efficiency

Diffractive lenses(DLs)can realize high-resolution imaging with light weight and compact size.Conventional DLs suffer large chromatic and off-axis aberrations,which significantly limits their practical applications.Although many achromatic methods have been proposed,most of them are used for designing small aperture DLs,which have low diffraction efficiencies.In the designing of diffractive achromatic lenses,increasing the aperture and improving the diffraction efficiency have become two of the most important design issues.Here,a novel phase-coded diffractive lens(PCDL)for achromatic imaging with a large aperture and high efficiency is proposed and demonstrated experimentally,and it also possesses wide field-of-view(FOV)imaging at the same time.The phase distribution of the conventional phase-type diffractive lens(DL)is coded with a cubic function to expand both the working bandwidth and the FOV of conventional DL.The proposed phase-type DL is fabricated by using the laser direct writing of grey-scale patterns for a PCDL of a diameter of 10 mm,a focal length of 100 mm,and a cubic phase coding parameter of 30π.Experimental results show that the working bandwidth and the FOV of the PCDL respectively reach 50 nm and 16°with over 8%focusing efficiency,which are in significant contrast to the counterparts of conventional DL and in good agreement with the theoretical predictions.This work provides a novel way for implementing the achromatic,wide FOV,and high-efficiency imaging with large aperture DL.

Mechanisms of Swelling of Iron Ore Oxidized Pellets in High Reduction Potential Atmosphere

The influences of the time, temperature and atmosphere on the reduction swelling of oxidized pellets were investigated by single factor experiments. The mechanisms of reduction swelling of oxidized pellets were analyzed and investigated by SEM （scanning electron microscopy） and XRD （X-ray diffractometer） analysis. The results show that the change rules of reduction swelling index of oxidized pellets in different reduction atmospheres are very similar. With the increase of reduction time, the reduction swelling index moves up firstly and then down. When the reduction temperature is above 900 ℃, α-quartz turns into α-tridymite, and the transition generates additional volume expansion effect. The reduction swelling index changes faster in H2 atmosphere than in CO atmosphere. Increasing Ha content in the reduction atmosphere is useful to decrease the reduction swelling index, but it is also easy to cause oxidized pellets cracking.