To use the coking coal in blast furnance there are some requirements that must be fulfilled-

-Coal should have low sulphur and phosphorus content because remaoval of this after coke formation
could result in cost increment.

-hardness of coal should be of suitable limit, because grinding equipment can sustain suitable limit of
hardened coal.

-alkali content should be low, because it can attack the refractory lining.

-moisture content should be low because it can create sticking and handling problem.

These problem can be overcome by converting coal to coke. Coke is manufactured in coke oven plants
by heating coal at 1100-12000C temperature in absence of air.

so to use biomasses( Here biomass referred as rice straw pellets and briquettes ) as reducing agent and
heating material, those above requirements must be fulfilled, but somehow there are negative
properties exist with respect to metallurgical coke mentioned above, these are-

-carbon content of biomass is low

-oxygen and moisture content is high

And heating value is also low.

But some positive peoperties are also there such as-

Low sulphur and ash content with respect to coal.

we face many of these difficulties to use biomass in blast furnance. We cannot directly use biomasses as
reducing and heating element in blast furnance.

To overcome these difficulties we use some of the pre trearment technologies. In those processes
Torrefaction or mild carbonization process has advantages over other processes as this process is cost
effective, bio coke obtained from this process is of high heating value.

The conversion of biomass to bio coke can be easily done by Torrefaction process. Collected rice straw
after converting it as pellets of suitable size must be heated at different temperature like
2500C,3000C,3250C,3500C in an isothermal condition for suitable time in presence of inert atmoshphere.
For this purpose we use stainless steel recator inside a resistive heating jacket, Equipped with
temperature indicator. The stainless steel reactor is heated by an attached heater, so the biomass will
get indirect heat through walls and we will also equipped it with a stirrer for uniform heating of biomass.
And there is condenser attached with it to collect condensable and non condensable products. Cooling
can be done by usual process as by water flow or some type of coolant flow inside the reactor. By the
end of process we will get different bio-coke for different torrified temperature and according to our
further use we can classified it for different purposes.