Sintering and pelletizing of iron ore

Travelling Grate process for pelletizing of iron ores

About two thirds of the global pellet production derives from Outotec travelling grate process, originally developed by Lurgi. The travelling grate is the leading technology for large capacities and guarantees high product quality and low operation costs. This has been proven recently with the engineering of the world's largest pelletizing plant in Brazil for Samarco with annual capacity of 7 million tonnes.

Steel Belt Sintering SBS^TM

For lower capacity pellet plants < 1,000,000 t/a, Outotec offers the SBS^TM steel belt sintering system, designed originally for iron ore pelletizing. The major benefits of pelletizing with our SBS^TM sintering concept are crystallized to the option of using CO gas as fuel, circulating effectively thermal energy and causing low environmental impact.

EOS® - Emission Optimized Sintering

We have built more than 400 sinter plants all over the world which correspond to more than 40 % of the world´s installed sinter capacity. In recent years the continuous further development of our travelling grate process has been directed mainly towards the reduction of energy consumption and emissions.

This resulted in the development and implementation of the Emission Optimized Sintering (EOS®) process for sinter plants in the 1990's. The process reduces the substantial off-gas volume by 50–60 % by housing the entire sinter strand, recirculating the off-gas and using its CO content as an energy source, to:

• minimize off-gas volume and consequently cut off-gas cleaning investment costs
• save energy by up to 20 %, here in form of coke, reducing operational costs
• significantly minimize dust, NO_X, SO_X, CO and CO₂ emissions.

EOS® can also be retrofitted with minimum production interference.

Optimizing the pellet or sinter indurating

For optimizing the iron ore sintering and pelletizing processes, we have developed solutions that combine decade-long experience in plant engineering with modern mathematical processes. The optimizers for pellet or sinter indurating are based on the state-of-the-art software tool APCprofessional® with graphic editing that combines statistical models, neuronal models (NeuroModel®) and tried-and-tested metallurgical models and determines the optimum settings for the nominal process values using the pioneering optimizer GenOptOnline® that operates on the basis of genetic algorithms. Now these optimizers are part of Outotec's after sales services.

For further information, please contact ferrous(at)outotec.com