Process for the smelting of a metalliferous feedstock material
AssigneeAfrican Rainbow Minerals Limited
InventorPetrus Hendrik Ferreira Bouwer
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Abstract
The present invention relates to a process for the smelting of a metalliferous feedstock material. The process includes the steps of: (i) feeding an agglomerate comprising of a fine metalliferous feedstock material and a fine reductant to a reactor, the agglomerate forming a packed bed within the reactor; (ii) smelting the agglomerate by passing a hot reducing gas counter current through the packed bed to form a molten material comprising a partially reduced metalliferous constituent, an intermediate slag constituent and entrained unreacted reductant constituent; and (iii) channeling the molten material to flow into a vessel to form a metal product and a slag product.
Claims20
A process for the smelting of a metalliferous feedstock material, the process including the steps of:
- (i) feeding an agglomerate comprising of a fine metalliferous feedstock material and a fine reductant to a reactor, the agglomerate forming a packed bed within the reactor;
- (ii) smelting the agglomerate by passing a hot reducing gas counter current through the packed bed to form a molten material comprising a partially reduced metalliferous constituent, an intermediate slag constituent and entrained unreacted reductant constituent, wherein the hot reducing gas has a CO/CO2 ratio of higher than 5;
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- (iii) channeling the molten material to flow into a vessel to form a metal product and a slag product, the vessel being separate from and in fluid flow communication with the reactor.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.