Improvement in the Life of Cold Sinter Screen Decks of Sintering Plant by Using High Wear Resistant Hard-facing Alloys

For smooth operation of the blast furnace, proper size and quality of the input raw materials are very much essential. Sinters produced in the sintering plants are first screened out to remove the undersize fractions before their supply to blast furnaces. The screens are fitted with punched steel deck plates where the undersized sinters are being screened. It was found that the life of these screen decks were very less due to its lower wear and abrasion resistance properties. So to improve the life and screening efficiency, high wear resistant hard-facing alloys was used over the base plate for use in the cold sinter screens. A layer of metallic carbides was deposited over the base plate to achieve higher hardness on the top surface. Simultaneously, the slots/ holes in the base plates were modified with increased taper across the thickness of the steel plates to overcome the problem of chocking/ blocking of holes during screening of sinter fines. The result showed about 4 times life improvement of the sinter screen decks i.e. 12 months from 3 months average. Moreover, <5 mm size fraction of sinter in the blast furnace charge also reduced to 5% from more than 10% observed earlier.