IN CONTRAST to conventional two stage process of steel making via blast furnace, direct steel making with pre-reduced iron ores or agglomerates have attracted attent-ion in recent times.This is particularly so for devolop-ing countries where there is availability of other raw materials for iron making but there is dearth of or limited resources of coking coal and abundant supply of
other type of non coking coals. In terms of energy equi-valent, availability of . solid fuel is many hundred
times more than that of natural gas. Extensive attempts have therefore been made to utilise non coking coals
to produce iron by non conventional methods such as
direct reduction processes. The solid iron produced by
reduction technique known as 'sponge' can then be trans-formed into steel by melting.
An attempt has been made in the paper to indicate the available resources of Indian coals, their nature and property which may be considered suitable for the prod-uction of sponge i ron either as such or after benef-iciation. Indications have also been given for the possi-bility of utilising char from the fluid bed carbonisation
of non coking coal where such material can be obtained from an integrated formed coke plant
