Recent advances in iron ore sintering

Abstract

Sintering is the most economic and widely used agglomeration process to prepare iron ore fines for blast furnace use. Owing to the depleting reserves of traditional high grade iron ore, there have been considerable changes in iron ore resources available throughout the world, especially in steel mills in East Asia. Corresponding to the changes in the availability of iron ore resources, the amount of impurities in iron ore has been slowly increasing. Some of these impurities have been found to have deleterious impacts on sinter quality and sintering performance. In the meantime, an increasing number of large blast furnaces with inner volumes of more than 5000 m3 have been built in East Asia which require more sinter and are often more demanding in terms of the quality requirements of the ferrous materials. Finally, sinter plants are facing increasing pressure due to more stringent regulations regarding their environmental impact. This paper gives an overall review of a variety of technologies developed worldwide to tackle the changing raw material characteristics and mitigate emissions from sintering operations. Given the high sinter usage and volume of their blast furnaces, most of the recent sintering technologies have originated from East Asia, particularly Japan.

The effects of agglomeration time and burnt lime addition on the optimization of iron ore cold agglomeration process

“…It should be noted that in the future, the scenarios may be even worse and this has driven frequent studies by companies and research centers to find alternatives. Usually what has been seen is the replacement of some investments in sintering by pelletizing, in addition to the use of new intensive mixers and micro-agglomeration projects [8,9]. On the other hands, there are some settings from the cold agglomeration stage that can lead to results that make it capable to absorb more fines, such as increasing its specific surface and optimizing the use of other sintering additives [1][2][3][4][5].…”

Improving High-Alumina Iron Ores Processing via the Investigation of the Influence of Alumina Concentration and Type on High-Temperature Characteristics

“…As confirmed in the literatures [7][8][9][10][11][12], the increase of Al 2 O 3 content is expected to be detrimental to the sintering performance of iron ores due to the low reactivity of alumina bearing minerals and high viscosity of primary melts. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the action mechanism of alumina on iron ore sintering.…”

Iron Ore Granulation for Sinter Production: Developments, Progress, and Challenges

“…As shown in Fig. 1, the iron ore sintering process flow includes raw materials yard, dosing compartment, primary mixing, secondary mixing, ignition, sintering, and sinter product crushing-screening [27][28][29] . Typically, the iron ores are first screened for size in the raw materials yard, then fully mixed in the first mixing drum before being agglomerated for granules in the second mixing drum.…”