Sinter plant

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (February 2013) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the French article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,628 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Usine d'agglomération]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|fr|Usine d'agglomération}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Sinter plants agglomerate iron ore fines (dust) with other fine materials at high temperature, to create a product that can be used in a blast furnace. The final product, a sinter, is a small, irregular nodule of iron mixed with small amounts of other minerals. The process, called sintering, causes the constituent materials to fuse to make a single porous mass with little change in the chemical properties of the ingredients. The purpose of sinter are to be used converting iron into steel.

Sinter plants, in combination with blast furnaces, are also used in non-ferrous smelting. About 70% of the world's primary lead production is still produced this way.^[1] The combination was once used in copper smelting, as at the Electrolytic Refining and Smelting smelter in Wollongong, New South Wales.^[2]