FIELD: ferrous metallurgy. SUBSTANCE: when smelting cast iron, metal ore and all necessary additives pass from top to bottom through reduction assembly blown through from the bottom by hot carbon monoxide and hydrogen-containing reducing gas. Reduction product is discharged from the bottom part of assembly and loaded into another assembly serving for its further processing. Reducing gas is produced in gas generator via partial oxidation of carbon materials or decomposition of natural gas or crude oil. When processing metal ores with high content of dusty and/or grainy fractions, ore, with supplementary agents added, is passed through reduction assembly with in-series, in-cascade, and stepwise arranged downward-inclined partitions. In this case, metal ore and, if necessary, additives are size-sorted into fractions and coarse ore fraction and, if necessary, coarse additive fraction are introduced into upper section of gas- distribution partitions, fine ore fraction into their middle section, and fine additive (if added) fraction into their lower section. EFFECT: enabled processing iron ore with 60-100% fine fraction with no preliminary treatment or conversion. 56 cl, 3 dwg
