There are certain advantages of using sinters as opposed to using other materials which include recycling the fines and other waste products, to include flue dust, mill scale, lime dust and sludge. Processing sinter helps eliminate raw flux, which is a binding material used to agglomerate materials, which saves the heating material, coke, and improves furnace productivity.
Improvements and efficiency can be gained from higher softening temperature and narrower softening in the melting zone, which increases the volume of the granular zone and shrinks the width of the cohesive zone. A lower silica content and higher hot metal temperature contributes to more sulphur removal.