It is mainly represented by the widely used iron powder on the market at present, and its preparation methods are roughly as follows: atomization method; reduction method; carbonyl method; chemical precipitation method.

The atomization method is a mechanical powder method, which is a method for directly crushing a liquid metal or an alloy to obtain a powder. It is widely used, and its production scale is second only to the reduction method. According to the dispersion medium classification, it can be divided into: water atomization; gas atomization; oil atomization. According to different processes, it can be divided into: two-stream atomization method; centrifugal atomization method; other atomization methods. This method has large output, simple process, and good product fluidity, but the equipment has a large investment at one time, and requires high cooling speed for preparing ultra-fine powder. At present, it is mainly used to produce coarse iron powder of about 200 mesh.

Carbonyl method: A method of preparing iron powder by thermal decomposition using iron carbonyl iron as an intermediate product. Typical representatives are Basf and domestic Jean. The iron powder produced by this method has high sphericity and good performance, but the price is higher. Although the domestically produced carbonyl iron powder is much cheaper, its performance stability is very large. Differences, and the process requires high, the intermediate products in the production process are extremely toxic, can be fatal in trace amounts, and have high requirements for the entire production management.

Reduction method: The method of preparing iron powder by reductive reduction of hydrogen, carbon and other reducing agents after refining in ore. The typical process is the Hegenus method and Pylon method that are well known in the powder metallurgy field at present. However, their particle sizes are relatively large and do not belong to the ultra-fine iron powder. At present domestic primary reduced iron powder and secondary reduced iron powder belong to this production method, but its performance stability is poor, the impurity content is high, and the price fluctuates at 4 yuan / Kg. Even though some manufacturers have produced 800-mesh fine iron powder through this method, there is still a large gap in performance.

Chemical precipitation method: A method for preparing an iron powder precursor in a manner similar to co-precipitation, and then preparing the iron powder through a process of calcination and reduction. The iron powder prepared by this method has small particle size, narrow particle size distribution, large specific surface area, high activity, strong adsorption performance, short diffusion stroke, and low sintering temperature. It is mainly used in the field of diamond tools, as well as foam metal, magnetic materials, water treatment and other industries.