An appraisal of raw materials for the blast-furnace

A better understanding of the influence of raw material quality on furnace performance has formed the basis of most of the recent developments in ironmaking. Increasing emphasis on higher production rates with lower consumption of fuel, constitent with uniform quality of hot metal, has made it necassary to examine fully the qualities of all the raw materials, as this alone can lay the foundation for a sound scheme of burden preparation and burden cont-rol. With this in view, a comprehensive programme has been initiated in the research laboratory to study the charac-teristics of the various ores, fluxes, and coke; some of the results of this investigation are discussed in this paper. An attempt is also made to highlight some of the special features that characterize blast-furnace operation at Jamshedpur in so far as they are related to raw mat-erial quality