High-efficiency photonic furnaces for metal production
AssigneeLimelight Steel Inc.
InventorsOlivia Faye DIPPO, Andrew Zigang ZHAO
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Abstract
The present invention is directed to photonic furnaces and methods of using the same to produce metal products from a precursor material such as oxides of metal, comprising one or more light sources producing a light beam, the light beam having a wavelength shorter than 600 nm, a reaction chamber with a precursor material inlet, a product outlet, and wherein the one or more light sources is capable of providing a sufficient power density at a beam impact area of the light beam to raise a temperature of the beam impact area to cause the reduction of the precursor material into metal.
Claims23
A photonic furnace for producing a metal product from a precursor material, the photonic furnace comprising:
- one or more light sources producing a light beam, wherein an emission wavelength of the light beam is shorter than about 600 nm;
- a reaction chamber;
- a precursor material inlet providing access to the reaction chamber;
- a product outlet;
- wherein the light beam of the one or more light sources is capable of providing a sufficient power density at a beam impact area of the light beam to raise a temperature of the beam impact area to at least a reaction temperature within less than about 5 seconds;
- wherein the beam impact area is located in the reaction chamber or is located in a preheating chamber, the preheating chamber being connected between the material inlet and the reaction chamber;
- wherein interaction of the precursor material with the beam impact area facilitates conversion of the precursor material to the metal product;
- wherein an amount of energy consumed by the furnace during production of the metal product is less than 12 GJ/tonne of metal product;
- and
- wherein the metal product is retrievable from the photonic furnace through the product outlet.
A photonic furnace for producing a metal product from a precursor material, the photonic furnace comprising:
- a reaction chamber;
- a precursor material inlet providing access to the reaction chamber;
- a product outlet adapted to facilitate retrieval of the metal product from the photonic furnace;
- a preheating chamber connected between the precursor material inlet and the reaction chamber;
- one or more light sources comprising a diode array, the light sources producing a light beam having an emission wavelength shorter than about 600 nm, the light beam of the one or more light sources being focused to a beam impact area disposed within the reaction chamber or the preheating chamber, such that the focused beam of the one or more light sources provides a sufficient power density to raise a temperature of the beam impact area to at least a reaction temperature of the precursor material within less than about 5 seconds, the beam impact area being configured to facilitate conversion of the precursor material to the metal product.
The photonic furnace of any of the preceding claims, wherein the furnace comprises a vacuum manifold operably coupled to one or more vacuum pumps and configured to reduce a pressure within the photonic furnace, the reaction chamber, and/or the preheating chamber to a pressure of less than 500 Torr (e.g. less than 100 Torr, less than 1 Torr, or less than 500 mTorr).
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.