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Pre-oxidation of fines of magnetite containing materials is usually carried out to get better yield of metals. Titaniferous magnetite ore (TMO) is one kind of low-grade iron ore (around 45-50% of total Fe) with a significant amount of TiO2 (23.23%) and V2O5 (0.403%). TMO fines have been pre-oxidised at 973 K (700°C) for 9 h under air atmosphere. The effect of reduction of raw TMO fines as well as the pre-oxidised TMO fines using boiler grade coal in the form of cylindrical briquettes has been studied in the temperature range of 1273 K (1000°C) to 1473 K (1200°C) for periods of 10, 20, 30, 40 and 60 min to estimate the relative yield of iron. The influence of temperature and time on reduction experiments has also been investigated with XRD, FESEM analyses along with chemical analysis of the reduced samples. The most novel result is that the yield of Fe by direct reduction of raw TMO (92.42%) is even marginally better than that of reduction of pre-oxidised TMO (90.89%) at 1473 K (1200°C) for 60 min. Thus the single-step reduction of raw TMO is techno-economically more viable than the pre-oxidation followed by reduction technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]