Process simulation of iron ore sintering bed with flue gas recirculation

As issues of productivity, quality control, energy efficiency and environmental regulation become ever more important in the iron ore sintering process, controlling combustion inside the sinter bed is attracting renewed interest in terms of flue gas recirculation (FGR) and oxygen or gaseous fuel enriched combustion. The application of combustion control schemes inevitably brings changes to incoming and outgoing gas conditions as well as to plant configuration. The objective of this study is to build a process model of a sintering bed using a flowsheet process simulator and to obtain information on material flows for various process configurations and operating conditions. The process modelling was designed to quantify the heat and mass flow in each of the bed segments, which could then be integrated to represent the overall material and energy flow of the entire bed. Variations in incoming and outgoing gas conditions were compared among different configurations of recirculation using the model.