A large amount of industrial gases such as oxygen are used in the smelting process of iron and steel enterprises. Oxygen is mainly used in blast furnace, melting reduction furnace, converter, and electric furnace.
At present, the conventional processes of large full-flow iron and steel enterprises are: coke oven, sintering, blast furnace, converter electric furnace, rolling process, etc. Due to the emphasis on environmental protection and the simplification of process flow, the international iron and steel industry has developed the short process before iron in modern times - smelting reduction ironmaking, which directly reduces iron ore raw materials to molten iron in a smelting furnace.
For a conventional steel mill, the smelting blast furnace requires 28%, and steel making requires 40% of the total oxygen demand of the steel mill. For a smelting reduction mill, the smelting requires 78%, while the steel making requires only 13% of the total oxygen demand of steel mills.
The main role of oxygen supply in blast furnace smelting is to ensure a certain high temperature in the furnace, rather than directly participate in the smelting reaction. Oxygen is mixed with the blast air and sent to the blast furnace. The oxygen enrichment efficiency of blast air proposed in the previous process is generally below 3%. With the improvement of blast furnace process, in order to save coke, the large coal injection process is adopted, and in order to improve output, the oxygen enrichment rate of blast air is increased to 5 ~ 6%, and the oxygen consumption is up to 60 Nm3/T iron. The blast furnace is mixed with oxygen - rich air, so oxygen purity can be low - purity.
With the rapid development of iron and steel industry, the demand for oxygen in blast furnace ironmaking has been unprecedentedly huge. VPSA oxygen plant with its low energy consumption, great stability, high degree of automation, quickly attracts many iron and steel enterprises. According to statistics, the number of contracts for PSA oxygen production process in the iron and steel industry in China in 2018 alone exceeded 1.5 billion yuan (US$210m). With the rapid development of the steel industry, the oxygen demand gap will continue to increase.
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