The chief source of metallic iron for steelmaking in India, even today, as it is in most part of the world, is through blast furnace (BF) route. This will continue to be so in the foreseeable future as the technology is most efficient, both process and economy-wise. However, as the world is moving into the next millennium, a critical look is being given to the process primarily because of its non-ecofriendliness (as a result of extensive use of metallurgical coal/coke requiring elaborate pollution control facilities) and huge investment involved for supporting facilities like extensive raw material preparation and handling, agglomeration, adoption of sophisticated instrumentation and control system, etc. Further the process warrants stringent scrutiny from the Indian point of view. Though India possesses vast reserves of iron ore, the same is characterised by high alumina to silica ratio, which results in viscous slag, resulting in higher coke rate and working of the furnace at lower basicities compared to Japanese or European Furnaces. This leads to lower productivity and inferior hot metal quality (high Si content, etc). Further, extensive adoption of mechanised mining has resulted in generation of huge amount of fines and super fines at mines pit head which cannot be used in BF Process without agglomeration. In addition despite having huge reserves of coal, only a small part of it (coking coal) is suitable for blast furnace operation. Further, these coals are characterised by high ash content, lower vitrinite, comparatively lower rank and inferior caking/coking properties. The ash content of coal reflects in ash content of coke which affects coke rate, slag volume, fluxes required and productivity of the blast furnace. Apart from affecting coke quality in terms of ash content, the ash content of coal affects caking/coking properties of coal which in turn affects strength of coke. In order to overcome the above, scientists and technologists have been working for quite sometime specially in the second half of this century to develop suitable process of ironmaking using non coking coals and iron ore fines. Sponge iron has found a place where cheap natural gas or coal is available as reductant and fuel. However, the inability of the process to produce liquid metal similar to blast furnace hot metal quality continued the search for alternative ones, which resulted in development of smelting reduction (SR) processes. These are basically oxy-coal processes aimed at providing an iron product similar to liquid metal produced in the blast furnace and suitable for steelmaking. An attempt has been made in the paper to highlight the development that are taking place in the area of smelting reduction, their current status and relevance of the same under Indian context. Economics have also been worked out for the processes which appear to meet the requirement of the country.
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