Iron ore sintering is an important and large energy‐consumption segment in the iron and steel industry. It is thus essential to save energy in the sintering process considering both quality and quantity. This paper takes exergy loss minimization as an optimization objective, and a sintering optimization model is established based on material balance and exergy balance. Optimized results are obtained by solving constrained multidimensional nonlinear programming problems. Two types of sintering processes, in which solid fuels consist of coke and coke/coal powder, are calculated and analyzed. The effects of fuel ratio, fuel preheat temperature, and sinter basicity on exergy losses are also studied. The results show that the exergy losses obtained from optimizations for two types of solid fuels decrease by 5.0% and 8.1%, respectively. Exergy loss has a negative correlation with the coal ratio and fuel preheat temperature and a positive correlation with the coke ratio and sinter basicity. Exergy efficiencies increase from 29.7% to 35.0% and 35.5%, for each optimization. The research in this paper is highly significant to exploring of the sintering process, guiding steel production, and reducing energy consumption.