Utilisation of biomass fuel in sintering process

Abstract

Biomass fuel the most widely used energy source, the contents of sulphur and ash are lower, while the content of hydrogen is higher. Biomass fuel has shown various advantages such as high efficiency, clean moulding, facile ignition and low-carbon emission. In this article, biomass fuel particles were involved in the sintering process to increase the sintering bed thickness. Under laboratory conditions, Φ 200 mm × 600 mm pot grates with different ratios of biomass fuel particles (0, 0·3, 0·5%) were tested, and the vertical sintering speeds measured were 28·57, 17·91 and 17·65 mm min⁻¹, respectively. After that, the metallurgical properties of sinter in different cases were measured. The indices of reductive degree measured were 65·72, 83 and 85%, the tumbler indices were 70·13, 51·03 and 50·87%, the indices of reduction degradation (RDI + 6·3 mm) were 37·7, 25·42 and 24·88%. The results revealed that the presence of biomass fuel had a positive effect on the reductive degree index, although the strength of sintered products degraded.

Keywords:

• Biomass fuel particles
• Sintering
• Bed permeability
• Metallurgical properties
• Sinter strength