Steel industry catalysts

The steel industry can be considered as one of the important foundations of any country’s economy. Some researchers have even listed steel consumption per capita as an indicator to assess the industrial status of a country. Today, in Iran, steel plays a very important role in the production and industrial sectors. As a mother industry, the steel industry plays an essential role in the national economy and society’s well-being. Therefore, the development of this industry is an effective factor in the development of other economic, industrial, scientific, and social sectors of the country.

The main methods of steel production in the world are generally divided into two categories:

1- Based on ore
2- Based on scrap

The first method is divided into the following two technologies:

A) blast furnace technology – converter

B) Direct recovery method – electric arc furnaces

In the direct recovery method, natural gas is the agent of ore recovery and is of interest in countries with rich natural gas resources such as Iran. With the discovery and proof of the existence of huge natural gas reserves in the country and the construction of the national natural gas transmission network and the development of the direct regeneration method in the world, the creation of steel industries by the direct regeneration method was considered.

Iron production by direct reduction method is done in several ways.

In this method, various catalysts are used, such as sulfurized, active, semi-active and neutral catalysts, and the technical knowledge of producing these catalysts is available in the materials collection of Goharfam researchers.