Substantial deposits of titanomagnetite (TTM) ironsand are found throughout the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand (NZ). This titaniferous iron ore contains approximately 8 wt% TiO2 equivalent, which prevents its use as a feedstock concentrate for conventional blast furnace (BF) processes. At present, ~1.5 Mt/a of ironsand is utilised in the rotary-kiln production of direct reduced iron (DRI), and a further ~1 Mt/a is exported for blending as a minority component within BF sinters. However, the increased focus on reduced CO2 emissions is now promoting a renewed interest in alternatives to existing carbo-thermic DRI approaches. This study reports initial investigative work into the production of DRI from NZ ironsand via hydrogen-reduction in an experimental fluidised bed reactor.NZ ironsand exhibits a naturally-occurring particle size distribution in the range 90-250 m, making it potentially well-suited to fluidised bed processing. Fluidised bed processing provides a potential advantage for direct use of ironsand fines without pre-treatment of material such as pelletizing and sintering. In the current project, we have designed and commissioned a small-scale experimental reactor that enables fluidised bed reduction in Ar-H2 atmospheres at up to 1050C. This experimental reactor includes a novel in situ sampling system which utilises a micro-cyclone to extract a small amount of samples ( 5g) of partially reduced material at specific time intervals during a batch reduction. This study presents the initial results of the fluidised bed reaction of ironsand from this reactor. Also, this study shows that quantitative x-ray diffraction is a useful approach to characterise the quality of the reduced product. CITATION:Prabowo, S W, del Puerto, D, Ryan, M J, Longbottom, R J, Bumby, C W and Monaghan, B J, 2019. Development of an experimental fluidised bed reactor for the processing of New Zealand titanomagnetite ironsand, in Proceedings Iron Ore 2019, pp 456463 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).