ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 7 -- United States Patent no. 12,595,522, issued on April 7, was assigned to NIPPON STEEL Corp. (Tokyo).
"Method for producing reduced iron" was invented by Takanobu Inada (Tokyo), Moritoshi Mizutani (Tokyo), Yutaka Ujisawa (Tokyo), Naoto Yasuda (Tokyo) and Hitoshi Funagane (Tokyo).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method for producing reduced iron that produces reduced iron by reducing iron oxide charged in a shaft furnace, in which a heated gas mixture which contains a reducing gas and a nitrogen gas, the reducing gas containing 90 volume % or more of a hydrogen gas, is blown into the shaft furnace from a tuyere equipped at a lower portion of a reduction zone of the sha...