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Sintering or pelletizing

For manganese and iron ore treatment, Outotec offers sintering technologies with a wide range of capacity. For smaller production capacities, we can provide Outotec SBS™ technology, and for larger-scale production, traditional travelling grate technology.

Sintering of Iron and Manganese ore

Manganese and iron ore sintering with Outotec SBS™ steel belt sintering technology is an application from chromite and niobium sintering. The process has been succesfully tested in pilot scale with different kinds of managenese and iron ores. All results have shown that the process is also suitable for manganese and iron ore sintering.

The process consists of proven equipment and process steps. The main stages of the steel belt sintering process are largely the same as in the travelling grate process for manganese ore.

The fine ore is mixed with fine coke, recycled dust, possible fluxes and sinter fines. The mixture is agglomerated into micro-pellets/ agglomerates in the rotary drum before feeding into the sintering furnace. This gives better permeability in the material bed on the steel belt.

In SBS™ process the cooling gases are used for the drying and sintering stages in the process. Coke is used as the main energy source in sintering. Additional fuel is mainly required for temperature control and adjustment. The product sinter is crushed, screened and conveyed to smelting plant. Screen underflow is returned to the feed mixture and part of the sinter is recycled as the bottom layer of the sintering furnace.

The use of sinter feed in iron or ferromanganese production allows larger-size closed submerged arc furnace operation. CO-rich furnace gas from closed furnace operation can be utilized, for example, in preheating in Outotec OPK™ preheating kiln and in the sintering plant. Recirculating process gases minimizes emissions from sintering and smelting and results in significant savings in energy consumption.

The major benefits of the Outotec® iron and manganese ore sintering plants are reduced overall energy consumption, high smelting furnace availability with high productivity, which nowadays all lead to increased competitiveness.

Pelletizing of Iron and Manganese ore

Iron ore and some manganese ores can also be pelletized. The raw material for the pelletizing plant is typically concentrate from a beneficiation plant. In the pelletizing plant, the concentrate is ground with coke breeze, filtered, pelletized with aid of bentonite and finally indurated in Outotec SBS™ Furnace. The product from the sintering furnace is a hard porous pellet with constant physical and chemical properties.