Sintering and Pelletizing Furnaces

The reader is urged to reread the first 11 pages of this chapter concerning the inevitable discontinuous operation of continuous furnaces, the costly consequences thereof, and the necessary design corrections. Chapter 8 includes original and corrected time-temperature diagrams from an actual case. 

In the continuous sintering process, a mixture of ore dust and coke breeze or anthracite coal is delivered to a traveling grate in a continuous bed about 18 (0.46 m) deep passing under an ignition arch or ignition hood of burners for induration. (See fig. 4.14.) 

Blast furnace productivity increased by the use of sinter. In some parts of the world, nearly all ore is sintered. Sintering provides the charge sizing that iron melters had long wanted for their furnaces. 

Induration is a process of heating and agglomerating a clinker or pellet by grain growth and/or recrystallization. 

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