Numerical Simulation of CO Generation and Combustion Efficiency in Sintering Process: Effect of Solid Fuel Particle Size

Abstract

For sintering pot productive process with various fuel particle size distributions, a transient numerical simulation sintering model based on the computational fluid dynamics approach is developed using Fluent 2021R1. The model combines chemical reaction, mass and heat transfer, Euler–Euler model, and fluid flow in porous media. In this study, CO is employed as the combustion's intermediate product, which is further oxidized by secondary combustion in the high‐temperature zone. Through calculations, the solid fuel combustion behavior of the sintering is explained collectively with the changing bed temperature, CO emission, and solid fuel combustion efficiency of the process under various fuel particle size distribution. In the sintering process, the fuel particle size distribution is crucial for lowering CO emissions and increasing combustion efficiency. The combustion efficiency shows a tendency of increasing initially before decreasing with the reduction of solid fuel particle size, while CO emissions show a trend of reducing first and then increasing. It is advantageous to lower the CO emission in the sintering process, and the combustion efficiency of the sintering process is greatly boosted by 5.13% when the proportion of solid fuel with 5 mm particle size decreases and the proportion of solid fuel with 3 mm particle size increases.