Numerical Investigation of Heat Transfer Characteristics in an Industrial-Scale Continuous Annular Cooler for Iron Ore Sintering Process

CFD simulations of annular coolers have often been performed on a single trolley, making it difficult for the method to provide reliable and accurate data for the optimum design of annular coolers. The present paper establishes a three-dimensional model of the entire annular cooler, uses sliding mesh to approach the actual working conditions, and through UDF, realizes the simulations of the continuous feeding process of the annular cooler, and obtains complete data for one run of the annular cooler. By comparing the simulated data with the actual measured data, the reliability of the model was verified. The temperature distribution inside the annular cooler and the temperature variation at the outlet of the waste heat recovery as well as the flow rate are also explored in detail. Subsequently, the temperature distribution inside the annular cooler, the flue gas flow, and the changes in temperature at each outlet were studied under different material layer thicknesses, and the discharge temperature under different thicknesses was obtained. Based upon the proposed method, a lot of data that cannot be obtained by traditional calculation methods can be obtained, thus shortening the cycle of optimizing the design and development of the structure and operating parameters of annular coolers.