Baosteel Shanghai’s new rotary hearth furnace has passed its hot test and is now delivering pellets into the product bins.

CISDI supplied the new furnace and is working with Baosteel on the commissioning of a second.

Baosteel is boosting its green credentials by launching a more environmentally-friendly system which will turn the plant’s iron-bearing dusts into valuable resources and also reduce waste emissions.

The rotary hearth furnace plays an important role by transforming iron and zinc waste into metallised pellets, which become the raw materials for blast furnace ironmaking, the basic oxygen furnace and electric arc furnace steelmaking.

Green balls made by compressing and drying the plant’s iron-bearing dusts and coke dry quenching powders and an adhesive bond are fed into the RHF.

Most of the iron oxide in the ball will be reduced into iron, while the zinc oxide will be reduced into zinc.

The zinc produced will then be volatilized in the fume and re-oxidised into zinc oxide, which can be recovered once settled into powder form.

The pellet metallisation rate achieved is at least 70 per cent and the dezincification rate is over 85 per cent.

CISDI is China’s first supplier of rotary hearth furnaces.

Three have been implemented successfully – two at HBIS Yanshan Steel and one at Baowu Group Zhanjiang in China and the technology has been granted 40-plus invention patents.

An aerial view of Baosteel Shanghai’s rotary hearth furnace, which was supplied by CISDI

Metallised pellets produced by the new rotary hearth furnace at Baosteel Shanghai