Agglomeration behaviour of steel plants solid waste and its effect on sintering performance

Recycling has been the fascinating topic among the researchers for all times. The present study shows the recycling of steel plant's solid wastes as blast furnace flue dust and sludge towards agglomeration and their use in the production of sinter. These wastes consist of metal oxides and coke fines as a valuable material with some alkali oxides. Using these wastes as it is in the form of fines exacerbate the further processing. Pellets of these wastes are prepared with three types of binders as molasses, dextrin and bentonite. The result reveals that properties as compressive strength, shatter strength, are better in the case of bentonite binder having the productivity of the disc pelletizer machine as 75. After that, these macro pellets used for sintering with iron ore and other ingredients in pot type, down draft laboratory grade sintering machine, which shows very high productivity and good mechanical properties of the sinter as well. The microstructural analysis reveals the presence of re-oxidized hematite and a little bit of a magnetite phase with some slag phases, which confirmed later by XRD analysis. Results also show the decrease in coke rate, i.e. coke consumption to produce sinter and at the same time, this process is highly eco-friendly.