Granulation is a size enlargement process which involves the movement of feed within a drum to produce granules of specific size and quality. To achieve good quality granules, the right operating parameters need to be tested and optimised. In this study, the critical operating parameters of the drum for sinter feed granulation were investigated to optimise the drum performance for the production of high quality granules. Specifically, the drum operating parameters such as drum loading, rotating speed, granulation time, pre-wetting, mixing and granulation moisture content were investigated to enable selection of the optimum drum operating parameters for the granulation of iron oxide ore sinter feed blends containing high contents of magnetite concentrate. Pre-wetting the feed with 80 wt.% of the granulation moisture at 2 min mixing of the feed prior to granulation was found to be the optimum. The batch-wise drum filling of 4 and 12 vol.% generated good quality granules. Also, the best drum speed was observed to be 15 revolutions per min (rpm) although the higher drum speeds (e.g. 40 rpm) showed higher bed permeability values (about 54 JPU) due to the production of very large size granules, which are weaker (higher bed shrinkage of 2.2 mm). Granulation kinetics studies indicate 5 min of granulation to be the optimum residence time. The optimum granulation moisture content is dependent on the iron oxide ore sinter feed blends and increases with increasing magnetite concentrate content in the sinter feed blends. CITATION:Adam, M, Addai-Mensah, J, Begelhole, J, Asamoah, R K and Skinner, W, 2019. Influence of drum operating parameters on granulation, in Proceedings Iron Ore 2019, pp 2236 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).