Agglomeration behavior of solid waste materials in steel plants

Abstract

This paper discusses the behavior of solid wastes such as blast furnace flue dust and sludge in steel plants. These wastes consist of metal oxides and coke fines as valuable materials with some alkali oxides. Processing of the wastes as it is obtained from a plant is challenging. In this study, pellets of these wastes were prepared with three types of binders such as molasses, dextrin and bentonite. These pellets were used for the preparation of iron ore sinter in a pot-type laboratory-grade sintering machine. The results reveal that compressive strength and shatter strength are better in the case of bentonite binder. This binder provides high compressive strength as well as minimum shatter index value. Thereafter, utilization of these carbon-containing pellets in sintering operation improves the productivity of sintering machine as well as decreases coke consumption in the process.