Sintering is a raw material preparation process of blast furnace ironmaking. However, its high energy consumption and pollutant discharge have seriously impeded the development of iron and steel enterprises. In order to reduce the energy consumption and production cost while improving the sinter output and quality, a novel blending optimization model was established based on the in-depth analysis of blending principle in this study. According to the complementary principle of the basic properties between iron ores, the blending model takes the minimum blending cost as optimization objective, and searches the blending scheme group that meets the requirements of granulation and mineralization performance. Then the yield and quality indices and fuel consumption were predicted, and the optimized blending scheme that meets the user's demand is selected via multi-index comprehensive evaluation. The experimental results show that the blending cost of optimized schemes reduced by 0.19-4.19% and fuel consumption decreased by 1.16-3.79 kg per ton sinter, with the improvement of sinter yield and quality indices. The emission of CO2 can be reduced by 15,700-51,200 tons for an enterprise with annual output of 5 million tons of sinter. (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier B.V.