Smelting Reduction Technology – Current Status and Future Outlook

The first commercial scale plant based on Smelting Reduction Technology, the Coal reduction process (Corex process) was designed and developed by Germans and promoted by Voest Alpine, Austria. The plant was set up at Pretoria Works, South Africa in 1989. The first Corex process-based plant in India was set up by JSW at Bellary in Karnataka. In this paper, the present state of art of the different smelting reduction (SR) technologies such as Corex, Romelt (Russian), Hismelt (Australia), Finex (Siemens and Posco), along with new low carbon smelting reduction green technologies is discussed. A brief discussion on fundamentals like foaming of slag during smelting reduction and kinetics of iron oxide reduction in molten slag is also given.