Granulation behaviour of a sinter mixture with high additions of pellet feed and ground pellet feed

Abstract

The present study investigated the influence of high proportions of pellet feed (two different particle sizes) on the cold agglomeration behaviour of a sinter mixture and the properties of the granules. Using high proportions of adherent particles (pellet feed) lead to a decrease in the mixtures’ mean diameter, producing wider size distributions with higher contents of granules below 1 mm. The bed permeability was impaired for higher additions of pellet feed, which correlated with the alterations of granules size distribution. Degradation tests so simulate handling and transported sharply affected granules size distribution and permeability, showing that larger granules are more susceptible to degradation. Moreover, both the ratio and the size distribution of the pellet feed were found to influence the granulation mechanism to different extents. Using finer adherent particles at adherents/nuclei ratios bigger than 50% changed the agglomeration mechanism from layering towards a combination of coalescence and layering.