MnO reduction in high carbon ferromanganese production: practice and theory

The SAF (submerged arc furnace) process is most widely used for industrial production of high carbon ferromanganese. Most plants use ore feed in the form of lump ore (?75 mm +6 mm), but long term supply is limited, and large quantities of ore fines are generated in ore mineral processing. Therefore development of alternative processes using ore fines (?10 mm) is important. The AlloyStream process is one such process developed to use a feed material mixture of fine ore, coal and flux. This process development provided a unique opportunity to correlate MnO reduction process theory to pilot plant production practice represented in minerlogical observations from furnace heap samples.