Optimisation model of fuel distribution in materials bed of iron ore sintering process

ABSTRACT

In this study, the optimisation model of fuel distribution base on numerical simulation was proposed to reduce the fuel consumption of sintering process. The simulation model of sintering process was carried out according to the heat and mass transfer, and the physical and chemical reactions of sintering. Then the heat income and expenditure of solid mixture in different materials unit was analysed via the simulation model. And the fuel proportion was adjusted on the basis of the difference between total heat quantity and heat quantity that the materials unit required to reach setting temperature. This model was validated by sintering pot test, the simulation results of bed temperature at different depth were very close to the detection results. The sintering pot test shows that the sinter yield and quality indices had little change after the optimisation of fuel distribution, while the solid fuel consumption was decreased by 3.83 kg t⁻¹.

KEYWORDS:

• Iron ores sintering
• fuel distribution
• numerical simulation
• heat quantity analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant Numbers 51474237 and U1660206].