Commercial Production of Iron Ore Agglomerates Using Sinter Feeds Containing a Large Amount of Fine Ores.

In order to improve present iron ore agglomeration processes drastically and meet the demands of future trends in iron ore resources suitably, a new agglomeration process named the Hybrid Pelletized Sinter process was studied. On the basis of a prior experimental study and the semi-commercial plant trial, a commercial plant of the HPS process with annual capacity of 6 million tons was constructed by remodeling the No. 5 Sinter Plant at NKK Fukuyama Steel Works. Through long term operation using a large amount of high grade fine ores, the superiority of this process was confirmed in terms of both productivity and fuel consumption.