Effective use of local iron ore and biomass waste as energy and material resources in iron making is an interesting economic prospect since Malaysia imports iron ore to supply its domestic steel consumption while there is an abundance of biomass waste from the palm oil industry. In this work, a composite pellet made of Malaysian iron ore with palm kernel shell (PKS) waste was subjected to reduction tests using an electric tube furnace to investigate the effect of temperature and PKS content on reduction rate. Several iron ore samples taken from different mining locations were subjected to thermal and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. The rate of iron ore reduction increased with increasing temperature up to 900°C. XRD analysis revealed that the original iron ore mainly contains iron oxide hydrate and was converted into simple hematite after heating and then become magnetite after reduction. The Fe content in the original ore increased almost 12% when 40wt% of PKS was used. The iron oxide was successfully

Utilization of Malaysian low grade iron ore is an attractive option of domestic iron resource; however, extra energy consumption is required and thus contributes to greenhouse gases. In this study, incorporation of low grade iron ore deposits with oil palm waste as substitution of coke was studied. Briquette composites of iron ore and char derived from oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) pyrolysis were produced with minute amount of distilled water. Reduction processes were carried out at 873 K to 1 173 K under argon atmosphere in an electric furnace for briquette composites with different mass ratio of ore/char. For kinetic analysis, briquette with 8:2 ore/char ratio was used and reduction was carried out by varying the residence time. The percentage of reduction was estimated by oxygen removal and considering the weight loss. The structural and chemical changes of raw materials and briquettes were characterized using XRD, TG/DTA, and XRF. The results indicate that increasing in temperature, time and EFB char content in the briquette will increase the percentage of reduction. XRD and XRF results show that the original iron oxide hydrate has been transformed into partial wustite by several stages and the iron content increased up to 62.7 wt% for 6:4 ore/char ratio briquette. Kinetic results suggest that reduction of iron is controlled by gasification of carbon and the activation energy is 43.21 kJ. EFB char appears to be a promising energy source for replacing part of coal consumption in iron making, and reducing CO2 emission.

This paper pertains to the reduction process of local low grade iron ore using palm kernel shell (PKS). It is well known that low grade iron ores contain high amount of gangue minerals and combined water. Biomass waste (aka agro-residues) from the palm oil industry is an attractive alternative fuel to replace coal as the source of energy in mineral processing, including for the treatment and processing of low grade iron ores. Both iron ore and PKS were mixed with minute addition of distilled water and then fabricated with average spherical diameter of 10-12mm. The green composite pellets were subjected to reduction test using an electric tube furnace. The rate of reduction increased as temperature increases up to 900 °C. The Fe content in the original ore increased almost 12% when 40 mass% of PKS was used. The reduction of 60:40 mass ratios of iron ore to PKS composite pellet produced almost 11.97 mass% of solid carbon which was dispersed uniformly on the surface of iron oxide. The aim of this work is to study carbon deposition of PKS in iron ore through reduction process. Utilization of carbon deposited in low grade iron ore is an interesting method for iron making process as this solid carbon can act as energy source in the reduction process.

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