In this article, mineralogical phase changes and structural changes of iron oxides and phosphorus-bearing minerals during the direct reduction roasting process were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscope (SEM). It has been found that the reduction of hematite follows the following general pathway: Fe₂O₃ → Fe₃O₄ → FeO → Fe. The last step of the reduction process contains two side reactions: either FeO → Fe₂SiO₄ → Fe or FeO → FeAl₂O₄ → Fe depending on the micro mineralogical makeup of the ore. In the reduction process of FeO → Fe, oolitic structure was destroyed completely and fluorapatite was diffused into gangue while metallic phase is coarsening at temperatures below 1200°C. Therefore, the separation of phosphorus-bearing gangue and metallic iron can be achieved by wet grinding and magnetic separation, and low phosphorus content metallic iron powder can be obtained. However, when the temperature reached 1250°C and beyond, some of the fluorapatite was reduced to elemental P and diffused into the metallic iron phase, making the P content higher in the metallic iron powder.

Studies on the direct reduction of carbon-bearing pellets made from discarded copper slag have been conducted in this paper. They include the influences of reduction coal content, limestone content, industrial sodium carbonate content, reduction temperature, reduction time and layers of carbon-bearing pellets on reduction effect. Finally, the optimum conditions have been obtained. The pilot scale experiment results show that the optimum conditions are the mass proportion of discarded copper slag, reduction coal, limestone and industrial sodium carbonate of 100:25:10:3, the reduction temperature of 1280 °C for the reduction time of 35 min, three layers (approximately 42 mm) of carbon-bearing pellets—this was the basis on which the pilot tests in a rotary hearth furnace (RHF) were conducted. The iron products obtained from the pilot tests under such conditions have an iron grade of 90.35% with an iron recovery rate of 89.70%. The mechanism research based on the analysis results of X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) indicates that fayalite (2FeO·SiO₂) and magnetite (Fe₃O₄) in the copper slag are reduced into metallic Fe in the direct reduction (DR) process, and the mass and heat transfer become stronger from the bottom to the top layer of the pellets, resulting in a rising iron recovery rate.