Electroreduction of Iron(III) Oxide Pellets to Iron in Alkaline Media: A Typical Shrinking-Core Reaction Process
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THE carbothermal reduction of iron is one of the founding technological pillars of human civilization.[1,2] Nowadays or even in the future, iron metal/iron-based alloys will still represent as the most widely used structural materials.[3,4] Currently, iron metal is commonly produced through the CO2 intensive reduction of iron oxides by carbon-coke in blast furnace. The current carbothermic-based process faces difficult environmental challenges, with large amount of CO2 emitted during the production of steel every year.[4] Therefore, in recent years, the environmentally friendly processes, such as the electrochemical processes have been widely investigated as potential green routes for the production of iron and iron-base alloys.[5–19] The ultra-low CO2 steelmaking (ULCOS) program was set up in Europe with the aim of developing new technologies to reduce greenhouse gases emissions in iron production.[15,16] XINGLI ZOU, Lecturer, SHANLIN GU, Master Candidate, XIONGGANG LU and WEIZHONG DING, Professors, XUELIANG XIE and CHANGYUAN LU, Ph.D. Candidates, are with the Shanghai Key Laboratory of Modern Metallurgy and Materials Processing, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200072, P.R. China. Contact e-mails: [email protected]; [email protected] ZHONGFU ZHOU, Professor, is with the Shanghai Key Laboratory of Modern Metallurgy and Materials Processing, Shanghai University and also Lecturer with the Institute of Mathematics and Physics, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, U.K. Manuscript submitted December 3, 2014. Article published online April 8, 2015. 1262—VOLUME 46B, JUNE 2015
Electrolytic production of iron is expected to be capable of sustaining a reasonably low-carbon emission as demonstrated in aqueous solutions and molten salts.[1–7,10–18] Although electrochemical extraction of aluminum has achieved great success due to the electrodeposition process occurs. However, it still remains a challenge to extend the electrodeposition process to iron-based materials production since it requires dissolved raw materials and liquid metallic product.[4] Molten oxide electrolysis (MOE) is an electrometallurgical technique that enables the direct electrolytic production of liquid iron from iron oxides.[3,8] However, high temperature [>1811 K (1538 C)] is needed inevitably to ensure the metallic iron products maintain in liquid form. Although the electrolytic production of iron powder at low temperature also has its limitations, e.g., iron powder products require melting process for further manufacturing and can possibly encounter oxidation issues. However, searching for new route for lowtemperature electrolytic production of iron metal is still extremely needed due to its environmental friendliness. The direct electrochemical reduction of metal oxides to metals/alloys in molten salts has been extensively studied for many years due to its low energy consumption.[20–32] Moreover, the gaseous reduction of iron oxides to metal iron by hydrogen gas has also been recognized as an environmental friendly way.[33–36] However, hig
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