Conventional iron ore sintering uses coke powder as the main energy source, which emits a large amount of CO₂ and air pollutants, thus using clean fuel instead of coke powder from the source is an effective and economical solution for emission reduction. Biomass fuels feature carbon neutral, low S, and low P. In this paper, kernel biomass char is selected as the research object to elucidate its combustion and gasification characteristics, and to investigate the influence law of its substitution for coke powder on the sintering process by sintering cup test. It was found that the optimal mass fraction of its substitution for coke powder is 40%, and the sintering index would not change significantly under this substitution ratio, while the CO₂, SO₂ and NO_x emissions were reduced by 23.05%, 42.77% and 30.99%, respectively, with obvious emission reduction effect.