Waste Heat Recovery from Sintering Plants

Abstract

Currently, about 33% of the heat needed for production of sinter is discharged into the atmosphere in the form of exhaust air from sinter coolers. In the present-day sintering practice, one of the most effective ways to recover and utilize the waste heat is considered to use the exhaust air from coolers.
Recovery of the sensible heat of the exhaust air from coolers in now in widespread use in pelletizing plants, which, like sintering plants, agglomerate ore fines. With sintering plants, however, waste-heat recovery has been slow to find acceptance, for many reasons. One major reason is a difference in the agglomerating mechanism between the sintering process and the palletizing process. Another is that there have been too many uncertainties about the economic justifiability of energy-saving efforts in the sintering operation.
This report briefly describes the sintering equipment built in 1976 and discusses the effects of the waste-heat recovery technology incorporated in it.