Bottom ash from a coal-fired power plant is usually landfilled to a nearby site, which causes a growing environmental concern and increased operating costs. One way of recycling the bottom ash is to produce light-weight aggregate (LWA) using a rotary kiln. This study investigated the temperature profiles of raw LWA particles in a rotary kiln to identify the range of operating conditions appropriate for ideal bloating. For this purpose, a new simulation method was developed to integrate a 1-dimensional model for the bed of LWA particles and the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for the fuel combustion and gas flow. The temperature of LWA particles was found very sensitive to the changes in the air preheating temperature and excess air ratio. Therefore, an accurate control of the operation parameters was essential to achieve the bloating of LWA particles without excessive sintering or melting.