8th International Congress on Science and Technology of Ironmaking - ICSTI 2018

With the rapid change in iron ore supplies and composition, steel mills now have to adjust the composition of the ore mixture to the sinter plant more frequently than ever before. Hence, different scales of test methods have been developed to help sinter plants evaluate new ore types and ore blends in order to optimise their ore mixtures and reduce raw material costs. However, iron ore sintering is very complex with many interdependent variables. For the same ores, the sinter quality and sintering performance may vary significantly with the scale at which the sintering tests are conducted. Therefore it is important to understand the effect of test scale on sintering performance and sinter quality while interpreting the test results. This paper provides an overview of various techniques which have been developed at different scales in order to evaluate iron ore and improve the understanding of the iron ore sintering process. This is followed by the results of two sinter blends tested at different scales.