Review of computational fluid dynamics modeling of iron sintering process

Iron ore sintering is a pretreatment step of smelting that agglomerates the iron ore using surface melting of green pellets to improve the quality of the steel product. The sintering process not only improves the quality of steel products, but also releases CO and CO2 gases, evaporates moisture, and improves the reducibility of iron ore to ensure smooth operation of the blast furnace. These factors are related with variables such as temperature and flux, so optimization is essential. However, the sintering process generates a lot of cost by consuming the second largest amount of energy in steel manufacturing and releases pollutants, so optimization through experiments is inefficient. Therefore, the various CFD models that simulate the sintering process were developed by the researchers. This paper summarizes the research that developed the iron sintering process as a CFD model. The sintering process is divided into three stages: drying process, reaction process, and cooling process, and the considerations of each study are discussed. We also discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each study. Developing an iron ore sintering model has the potential to extend the application of CFD to the entire steel process, which is expected to reduce cost and environmental impact and increase efficiency.