To increase the flue gas temperature of outlet and waste heat recovery efficiency in the waste heat recovery area，a simulation study on sinter circular cooler layer-loading is carried out in a 420 m2 sinter circular cooler in an iron and steel company.Based on the porous medium model and the standard k-ε turbulence model，the two-equation energy model of non-equilibrium thermodynamics is set up with the user-defined-scalar (UDS)and user-defined-function (UDF)of Fluent.A mathematical model of sinter cooling process is established with the computing platform of Fluent.The optimal parameters were obtained by simulating different conditions of layer-loading and general-loading with the mathematical model.The optimal parameters are as follows：the height，porosity and size of bottom layer are 0.4 m，0.4 and 0.035 m，respectively; the height，porosity and size of middle layer are 0.5 m，0.3 and 0.025 m，respectively; those of top layer are 0.5 m，0.3 and 0.03 m; the gas velocity of inlet is 7.65 m·s-1，and the gas temperature of inlet is 404 K.The results show that compared with the general-loading，the layer-loading used in the sinter circular cooler can increase the flue gas temperature at outlet by 43.72 K，and increase the waste heat recovery efficiency by 23.2% in waste heat recovery area.