Recent years, a manufacturing of high-strength coke for stable low RAR blast furnace operation is required to reduce CO₂ emission. On the other hand, resource depletion of high-quality coal and iron ore continues. Thus it has become much more important to produce high quality burden using low grade resource. As for coal, in conjunction with the rising price of high-quality caking coals, it is difficult to obtain non or slightly caking coals. So utilization of carbon resources for cokemaking is an important issue.

Under such a background, papers by general authors as well as the members of the ISIJ research project "Cokemaking Technology for Low-quality and Unused Carbon Resources" are invited to contribute to this special issue. Wide range of researchers, which can be bases of a new technology / process or a process improvement and also a technical development on reforming of low-quality coal / biomass, development of binder to maintain coal plasticity and so on are welcome to contribute the issue.

The deadline for the submission of manuscripts is March 24, 2014. Manuscripts should be sent to the Editorial Group of ISIJ shown below in a style consistent with the “authors guide” of ISIJ International. Authors wishing to submit review papers should contact to the following chief editor: