Volatile Release During Pulverised Coal Injection as a Factor in Determining Combustibility

Pulverised coal injection is a valuable and important tool in producing iron in blast furnaces. Without PCI the furnace is dependent solely on the more expensive coking coal. It increases flexibility and reduces costs. However, until recently determining if a coal would be suitable for PCI has been difficult, requiring access to a pilot scale PCI rig. A previous project has shown that the drop tube furnace can be used to assess coals for PCI but it also showed that low volatile bituminous coals perform better than predicted by other coals, based on their volatile contents. This study aimed to consider the behavior of coals during pyrolysis and assess the resulting chars based on the maceral components, to see if the constituents of these coals contributed to the performance observed previously.