Numerical simulation of heat and mass transfers in sintering process

Iron ore sintering is a complex process of heat and mass transfers,which contains heat transfers in/between each phase,water evaporation and condensation,coke combustion,limestone decomposition and gaseous reaction.Through researching the iron ore sintering process,a 3D-unsteady mathematical model was developed.This model was based on the porous media model and combined the portion non-equilibrium thermodynamics energy two-equation model,species transport and sintering reaction kinetic models.This model was conducted on the platform of FLUENT software,the energy two-equation model was established through the user defined scalars(UDS),and the source terms of energy equations and species transport equations are corrected through the user defined functions(UDF).The temperature of gas and solid and the distribution of major gas components can be obtained by using this model to simulate the sintering process.The simulation results and the experimental results are agreed well,which shows that the model is reliable.