Belt conveyor Ecobelt®

for the metallurgical industryfor hot materials

Sinter plants agglomerate iron ore fine particles (dust), with other fine materials at high temperatures, to create a product that can be used in a blast furnace. The final product, so called “sinter”, is then used to convert iron into steel. The sinter is a small, irregular nodule of iron mixed with small amounts of other minerals. The sintering process fuses the constituent materials to make a single porous mass with little change in the chemical properties of the ingredients. At the sinter machine exit, the material is broken into smaller pieces by a breaker and is cooled down using a forced air stream. At the sinter cooler discharge, temperatures are still high, ranging 400 to 700 °C, so that the hot sinter can be transported only by a conveyor which can withstand very high temperatures. Moreover, the sinter is a very abrasive material, acting as a micro-tool over the time that abrades the surfaces on which it is sliding. This type of sinter is also toxic and needs to be transported by a dust-tight conveyor to prevent fine particles from contaminating the environment and exposing the plant operators to safety hazards. For this high-value product, reliability is the main feature required of any equipment designed to operate in sinter plants. In fact, a forced outage might prove to be extremely costly in terms of production losses and hence profit losses.