Solar processing of composite iron ore pellets: Preliminary assessments

Composite pellet processes have been used in iron making industry over a number of decades to produce sponge iron from a range of iron ore feed materials. These processes along with all other iron-making units utilize fossil fuel based inputs such as coal, coke and natural gas, for reducing the iron ore feed and fulfilling the energy demand of the process. In this paper, we propose a new iron making process that uses solar energy for smelting …