The steel industry is responsible for a very large environmental impact because more than 70% of the production of iron is done in blast furnaces, where the reduction of iron oxides (ore) is performed with carbon monoxide obtained from coke and coal. Their partial oxidation produces CO used to reduce the iron oxides, simultaneously yielding huge amounts (approximately 2GT/a) of CO₂. It is necessary to find new alternatives to decarbonize the steelmaking process. The present work studies the reduction kinetics of iron oxides using hydrogen as a reductant. The overall reaction displays complex behavior that explains the versatile and partly contradictory interpretations found in the literature on hydrogen reduction of iron oxides. Experiments in thin layers of powder were performed under various experimental conditions to investigate the kinetics with both pure iron oxide and an industrial feedstock. To support the interpretation of the data, morphological and chemical-physical characterization was performed, and a comparison between pure hematite and commercial ironmaking pellets was reported.

中文翻译：

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薄层氧化铁粉末的氢还原


钢铁行业对环境的影响非常大，因为超过 70% 的铁生产是在高炉中完成的，在那里，氧化铁（矿石）的还原是使用从焦炭和煤中获得的一氧化碳进行的。它们的部分氧化产生用于还原氧化铁的 CO，同时产生大量（约 2GT/a）的 CO₂。有必要寻找新的替代方案来实现炼钢过程的脱碳。本工作研究了使用氢作为还原剂的氧化铁的还原动力学。整个反应表现出复杂的行为，这解释了在关于氧化铁氢还原的文献中发现的通用且部分矛盾的解释。在各种实验条件下对薄层粉末进行实验，以研究纯氧化铁和工业原料的动力学。为了支持对数据的解释，进行了形态学和化学物理表征，并报告了纯赤铁矿和商业炼铁球团之间的比较。