Study on Thermal Reduction of Phosphate Ore by Carbon in the Fluidized Bed Reactor

A new method that phosphate ore was reduced by carbon under fluidization was introduced to produce yellow phosphorus, and we made thermodynamic analysis of the process and investigated the effect of coke content, flow of nitrogen gas, and temperature on percent reduction of phosphate ore. The thermodynamic analysis indicated that the beginning reaction temperature of phosphate ore with mole ratio of silica-to-lime equal to 3 decreased by 8.8°C with increasing 0.1 atm N2 partial pressure when the system total pressure was 1 atm. The experiment results showed that percent reduction of phosphate ore increased with increasing the coke content, the flow rate of nitrogen gas below 600 L/h and the temperature. The reduction rate in the fluidized bed reactor was better than that in a fixed bed under the same temperature, particularly lower temperature. The temperature was a dominant factor, the influence of which on reaction was greater than any other factors.