LAUSR

Coke is needed to act as reductant, spacer and to provide heat for the blast furnace. Especially, the strength of coke is important physical property for support the iron ore charged and for passing gases through melting zone in blast furnace. A variety of studies have been investigated to use certain amount of low quality coal for producing high strength coke. Coke is a porous material that consists of matrix and pores. The microstructure of coke is known to influence its strength.1,2) Accordingly, it is essential to understand dominant factors of coke strength and influence of coke pore structure on coke strength. Various researches of evaluating coke strength by using quantitative analytical method have been done.3–7) Investigation of the relationship between coke microstructure and strength was carried out by using micro X-ray CT 3-D model by Uchida et al., and they conducted 3-D stress analyses of cokes produced from caking coal and slightly caking coal in order to investigate the influence of the 3-D microstructure on coke strength.8) Structure Analysis of High Strength Coke Using X-ray CT