Basics of Iron Ore Sintering

In iron making process, sintering of iron ore fines is an integral step to utilize not only the ore fines but also to introduce a part of flux (limestone and dolomite) along with the sinter in blast furnace burden. In this way, the productivity of the furnace considerably improves. In this paper, some fundamental aspects such as the vertical sintering speed, influence of mixing and granulation, etc. are discussed. The author has worked for almost three decades in this area and has extended the sintering technology to manganese ore fines and chromite fines. In case of chromite, the temperature required for sintering is about 2000C more than that required for iron ore sintering. The process conditions for manganese ore sintering are almost similar to that for iron ore. The author has actively contributed to projects for setting up of batch type (capacity 15000 tpa) sinter plants at industry site. The first plant was setup for iron ore fines, the second unit was setup for utilization of manganese ore fines and the third plant was setup for utilization of manganese ore bag house dust. The manganese ore sinters thus produced were used as part of the burden for production of ferromanganese.