Factors Governing the Strength of Agglomerated Granules after Sintering

Segregations of materials exist more or less in iron ore sintering beds and they are essential for the sintering process. Therefore, control of the segregations can be a key technology to improve the performance of the process. Granule design for raw materials seems to be an effective technology to realize it. However, there is still insufficient information available for establishing the technology. This study focused to estimate factors governing the strength of sintered granules and following results were obtained: Fluidity of the fine mixtures in high temperatures can be qualitatively estimated considering liquidus temperature indicated in an appropriate phase diagram which corresponds to the main components of the mixtures. Fair linear relations were obtained between the fluidity of the adhering layers of each type of model granules and the strength of the sintered granules. Chemical composition of the adhering layers and fraction of large (+0.01 mm) pores and loss on ignition of the core particles are the estimated dominant factors governing the strength of sintered granules.