A process for producing hot briquetted iron with increased solid carbonaceous material and/or flux includes: providing a shaft furnace of a direct reduction plant to reduce iron oxide with reducing gas; providing a hot briquette machine to produce hot briquetted iron; coupling a chute between a) a discharge exit of the shaft furnace for discharge of hot direct reduced iron and b) an entrance of the hot briquette machine; adding solid carbonaceous material and/or flux to the discharged hot direct reduced iron from the shaft furnace to produce a mixture of the discharged hot direct reduced iron and the solid carbonaceous material and/or flux before feeding to the hot briquette machine; and processing in the hot briquette machine to produce a product of hot briquetted iron with increased solid carbonaceous material content greater than about 3 weight percent and/or an increased flux content.

A method produces a high-strength sintered ore while maintaining a high production rate by performing appropriate oxygen enrichment at a position closer to an ore discharging section than an ignition position without using gaseous fuel in the operation of a sintering machine. In a method for producing sintered ore including sequentially combusting carbonaceous material in a sinter bed (raw material charged layer) in a DL sintering machine to sinter the mixed raw material, in performing oxygen enrichment from above the raw material charging layer on the sintering machine, the oxygen enrichment is performed at a position closer to the ore discharging section than the position where 4 minutes have passed since the upper surface of the charging layer was ignited

A method of introducing a metalliferous feed in an ironmaking process, the method including the steps of, pre-drying an iron containing sludge by drying means to an amount of 15 to 30% (w/w) moisture, mixing the pre-dried iron containing sludge with a binder material to obtain a granulate, having a particle size of less than 4 millimeter and drying the granulate to a maximum of 3% (w/w) moisture, thereby forming the metalliferous feed, wherein the metalliferous feed is subsequently injected into a cyclone part of a metallurgical vessel.

A compacted ‘green’ briquette between 5 cm.sup.3 and 20 cm.sup.3 including, prior to reduction in a direct reduction process, a composition including at least 30% lignocellulosic biomass material by dry weight and at least 55% iron ore fines by weight, a density of between 1.4 g/cm.sup.3 and 2.0 g/cm.sup.3, and a compaction strength of at least 500N. A direct reduced iron briquette suitable for the production of iron and/or steel including at least 85% iron by weight and at least 1% fixed carbon by weight, and a volume of between 7.5 cm.sup.3 and 30 cm.sup.3, wherein the briquette has, prior to reduction (i.e. as a ‘green’ briquette), the above composition.

A method for predicting burning through point (BTP) based on an encoder-decoder network is provided, which belongs to a field of soft-sensing modeling in an industrial process. A BTP prediction model based on the encoder-decoder network with a temporal attention mechanism and a spatial attention mechanism is developed according to data acquired during an operation of a sintering machine, where the temporal attention mechanism is used to characterize temporal dynamics of samples, and the spatial attention mechanism is used to capture a correlation between an object variable and an advanced feature, to improve accuracy and robustness of the model. With the model, BTP in a sintering process can be predicted in real time, which has great practical significance for on-site process guidance and parameter adjustment.

A DRI product and method of forming the DRI product. DRI is formed from a reducing process, and thereafter the DRI is subjected to another heat treatment that produces a DRI product. The DRI product formed has a metallic shell around at least a portion of a DRI core. The heat treatment may be delivered through the use of a plasma torch, a gas burner, an oven, or any other like heat source. The heat treatment may heat the DRI for a fraction of a second and quickly cool the DRI in order to melt the surface and form the metallic shell without vaporizing a significant portion of the DRI and without losing a significant amount of the latent energy in the DRI.

A cooling apparatus of hot briquetted iron is proposed. The cooling apparatus includes a cylindrical rotary body rotating while being inclined such that an outlet section through which cooled hot briquetted iron is discharged faces upwards, and including a water-level control plate formed under a hot-briquetted-iron charging section to retain a predetermined coolant; a blade formed along an inner circumferential surface of the rotary body to guide the hot briquetted iron introduced therein towards the outlet section; and a coolant spray module including a plurality of spray nozzles that differentially control an amount of the coolant sprayed inwards from the outlet section. The hot briquetted iron is primarily cooled by retained coolant, is guided by the blade, and is secondarily cooled by the coolant spray nozzles, thus maximizing cooling efficiency of the hot briquetted iron during a cooling process and thereby minimizing coolant consumption.

A briquette cooling conveyor system includes an apron pan conveyor. The apron pan conveyor includes: an apron pan with openings adapted to drain water from the apron pan conveyor, an apron pan upper, carry strand, and an apron pan lower, return strand. The briquette cooling conveyor system further includes a carriage side flushing hopper positioned between the apron pan upper, carry strand and the apron pan lower, return strand, and the carriage side flushing hopper is configured to capture fines and water from the system.

A method for preheating metal pellets before charging into a melting furnace, wherein the pellets are transported by a conveyor belt to a chute and discharged from the chute into the melting furnace, the method including heating the pellets by direct flame impingement from two or more banks of burners, wherein the two or more banks of burners comprise an upstream bank of burners and a downstream bank of burners; and controlling the upstream bank of burners to operate oxygen-rich so as to create an oxidizing zone and the downstream bank of burners to operate fuel-rich so as to create a reducing zone.

A device for manufacturing molten iron is provided. The device for manufacturing the molten iron includes a multi-stage fluidized reduction furnace for reducing a powdered iron ore including hematite and limonite, a melting gas furnace connected to the fluidized reduction furnace through an ore conduit and a gas conduit, a fluidized bed oxidation furnace for oxidizing magnetite to be converted into hematite through steam provided from the fluidized reduction furnace, and a hydrogen processing unit for processing hydrogen generated by the oxidation reaction of magnetite in the fluidized bed oxidation furnace.