Petroleum is a major source of energy in the world. Its refinement process yields the wide variety of hydrocarbon products used in industrialized societies, including motor gasoline, distillate fuels and home heating fuel. The United States is a leader in refined petroleum products. Steel manufacturing is one of petroleum's most important uses.
Carbon is the major component of petroleum coke. It plays four roles in the ironmaking process. It is an excellent coal replacement because it has a low ash level.
Coke is prepared by heating crushed coal to high temperatures in the absence of air in an enclosed coke oven. This process decomposes volatile material from coal to produce a solid known as "petroleum or isotropic coke."
The carbon in petcoke can be converted into liquids such as kerosene by a large fraction. The remaining fraction is isotropic and has a low specific gravity, which gives it good coking properties. The isotropic oil coke is macroporous and can be ground up to mix with iron ore as part of the steelmaking process.
Reactive petroleum coke can react rapidly with oxygen in the gasifier of the melter to produce molten metal and reduction gases. In the process of iron making, a slag containing the heavy metals liberated from the combustion is created. The sulfur in the slag is extracted and used to make a sorbent for the removal of sulfur from the melter gasifier.
The inventive process utilizes a melter gasifier to produce a molten product comprising iron and steel preproducts along with a reduction gas which is rich in carbon. The process eliminates the use of coal or coke from coal, which was previously used as a source of fuel in melter-gasifier iron-making. The reaction in the gasifier melter combusts almost completely the petroleum coke. This solves a problem of environmentally unfriendly disposal and removes sulfur and heavy elements from it.
The reactive petroleum is fed into the melter-gasifier via a lock hopper on the upper end. It is mixed with oxygen and particulate ferrous material which has been reduced to a liquid state in a separate reduction furnace to form at least a first fluidized bed zone. Then the petroleum coke, oxygen and iron ore are reacted at elevated temperature to combust the major portion of the petroleum coke to produce a reduction gas and molten iron and steel preproducts.
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