Through studying a 360 m2 sinter cooler in an iron and steel company

a mathematical model for heat transfer in sinter cooling process is established. This model is based on the porous medium model

in which the momentum equation is corrected by Ergun equation and the energy equation is corrected by the two energy equations for local non-equilibrium thermodynamics. This model is solved with the user defined functions (UDF)and the user defined scalars (UDS)in the platform of computational fluid dynamics software

Fluent6.3. The sinter size

inlet velocity

material height

porosity and inlet temperature are the main parameters affecting the waste heat recovery efficiency. The five parameters are simulated and their optimal combination is determined by orthogonal experimental method for improving the waste heat utilization

which are as follows: sinter size 0.025 m

inlet velocity 7.65 m·s-1

material height 1.8 m

porosity 0.45

and inlet temperature 414 K. This model is verified reliable by comparison with the test data. The method can be used for design of sinter coolers.