A Novel Sintering Process for Porous Iron Ore Sintering with Enhanced Productivity

The present work proposes a novel process to sinter porous iron ore (porosity ~23–24%) with enhanced productivity and quality. The iron ore is pre-processed in the presence of calcined lime for the temporary closure of pores, which further prevents water absorption during the granulation process in drum in the presence of water. The calcined lime coated iron ore provides surface coating on them, which enhances the reaction kinetics, inhibits water absorption into the pores, and espousal to early slag formation during sintering. The sinter productivity, product yield (+5 mm), and cold strength property have shown a significant improvement when the pot sintering experiments are performed through the proposed process.