Steel Belt Sintering Plant

Metso's Outotec steel belt sintering plant enables good charge uniformity for consistent electric furnace performance, lower power consumption, and higher recovery.

Take ferroalloy production efficiency to a new level.

• Transforms problematic fines into profitable pellets
• Produces consistently high-quality pellets ideal for use as smelting charge material
• Fulfills strict environmental requirements with efficient off-gas cleaning and low water consumption
• Reduces operational costs
• Maintains performance and provides the best long-term return on investment with a complete range of life-cycle services

Convert problematic fines into profitable pellets

The primary raw materials in the process are ore fines and/or concentrates, as well as fine anthracite or coke. These feed materials are ground in a ball mill, de-watered in capillary-effect ceramic filters, and then pelletized in a drum before being fed to the steel belt sintering furnace.

Metso's Outotec Steel Belt Sintering Furnace is an effective, multi-compartment furnace through which pellets are conveyed on a perforated steel belt. This treatment gives the pellets a strong structure that can withstand mechanical and thermal treatment. The counter-current flow of cooling gases recycles heat from finished pellets to those entering the front-end compartments. This heat is used for drying, heating, and sintering the pellets, meaning that the process has very low external energy consumption. The off-gas flows are cleaned with Metso cascade scrubbers. The efficient utilization of CO gas from the smelting furnace further reduces operational costs by lessening the need for expensive external fuel sources. Dust is effectively recycled back into the pelletizing process.

The furnace produces spherical, uniform, hard, and porous pellets with consistent physical and chemical properties. They are an ideal charging material for ferroalloy smelting in the Metso Submerged Arc Furnace.

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