KINETICS OF GASIFICATION OF CARBON AND CARBOTHERMIC REDUCTION OF IRON-OXIDE

Rates of gasification of samples of graphite powder, employed in an earlier investigation by Abraham and Ghosh, were measured in CO2 and mixtures of CO2-CO and CO2-Ar in the temperature range 1203-1373 K. These measurements allowed successful correlation between the rates of carbothermic reduction of iron oxide determined by Abraham and Ghosh and rates of gasification of graphite. The data of the present investigation do not obey the quantitative correlations reported in the literature regarding the influence of carbon monoxide on the rate of gasification, which suggests that the attempts at generalisation in the literature are of doubtful validity. It has also been established that this was the reason why the rates of carbothermic reduction of iron oxide could not be predicted quantitatively from the rates of gasification of graphite in the earlier study.