Manganese Sinter Production with Wood Biomass Application

Abstract

A large amount of finely dispersed manganese ore left after benefication operations or blown out from the furnaces is unsuitable for direct use in electric furnaces and blast furnaces, therefore it is necessary to granulate it in order to have the efficient use of its fine ore particles in metallurgy. To make our research more of practical use, we found it is reasonable not only work over manganese fines sintering but also to attempt mitigating the negative effect on the environment produced by the further sintering and apply the biofuel within the total fuel mass. Under laboratory conditions, the studies have been carried out with the objective to obtain manganese sinter, in which wood biomass is applied, namely initial and pre-pyrolyzed, at temperatures of 673, 873, 1073 and 1273 K. The amount of biofuel in the sinter blend was 25 wt.%. It has been established that the biomass use causes the decrease in the specific capacity of the sintering plant. However, for the efficient manganese ores sintering process, the biofuel of high pyrolysis temperature of 1273 K is required. To achieve the specific capacity and the yield to be as high as those when coke breeze is only used, the amount of the biofuel for manganese ore sintering should be less than 25 wt.% of the solid fuel. Additionally, it has been revealed that the further increase in the biofuel ratio in the total fuel amount is possible on condition that its reactivity is decreased, or larger particles of the biofuel are used.