They say that the small things matter the most. It’s particularly true when it comes to ore sintering. Ore is sintered and then grounded before it goes to blast furnace. The resulting fraction rate directly affect the efficacy of ironmaking. Fine fraction (also known as return fines) affects the outcome the most. Excess of fines increase the amount of slag, coke consumption and CO2 emission. Each percent point of return fines reduced saves 1 kg of coke per ton of iron or several hundreds tons of coke a day.
The amount of return fines can be adjusted by an operator of the sintering machine. It is usually done several times a day. Why so? Because sieving takes time and effort, so when adjusting the sintering machine its operator does not know, what is the current fraction composition — only what is was like several hours ago. But what if we could know the share of return fines immediately? Well, we actually can with a AiMesh system which analyzes the size of every agglomerate grain in real time and provides detailed statistics by any requested amount of time.
Book a demo and start saving millions on coke and carbon emissions.