Development and Problems of Fluidized Bed Ironmaking Process: An Overview

Comprehensive control of greenhouse gas emissions and response to climate change are concerns of countries around the world to protect living homes. The steel industry is responsible for over 10% of global CO2 emissions, with approximately 80% of these emissions coming from the ironmaking process. Great efforts have been made in both blast furnace (BF) and non-blast furnace ironmaking processes to reduce emissions. Fluidized bed technology has become a crucial method used to process iron ore powder in non-blast furnace ironmaking, such as smelting reduction and direct reduction. This paper introduces the working principle and several typical working states of fluidized bed (FB) technology to clarify the key to fluidized bed process operation. And different kinds of fluidized bed ironmaking processes in recent decades are compared, including FIOR, DIOS, Circored, Circofer, FINMET, HIsmelt, FINEX, etc. Finally, the possible problems and solutions in the future development of fluidized bed ironmaking are analyzed. Hope that this work can contribute to the advancement of basic theory and technology research in fluidized bed reduction, and provide support for hydrogen metallurgy in the steel industry.