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By N. L. Piret

Reprocessing of low zinc-bearing residuals with a zinc content of less than 10%, originating from the iron and steel industry, has been given more and more attention in the last few years, due to the potential landfill liability and the increasing cost of disposal by dumping. Whereas, recycling of hazardous electric arc furnace dust is already being performed commercially on a large scale in the U.S., Japan and Western Europe, almost no reprocessing takes place in the case of these low grade zinc-bearing materials. In blast furnaces and basic oxygen furnaces dusts and / or sludges are generated at a rate of 1 to 2 % of the respective production. The technologies for the retreatment of these types of materials, either commercially available or still being developed are briefly described hereafter. They involve internal recycling, upgrading by physical separation methods, separate hydrometallurgical processing and pyrometallurgical treatment. Their scope and limitations are critically assessed in terms of technological applicability, economic feasibility and environmental compatibility. Since, the possibtlity of achieving economic profitability is unlikely with this type of material, the main criteria for acceptability of the treatment process are: generation of a iron-rich material, suitable for treatment by the iron/steel industry, acceptance of the non--ferrous metal-bearing sub-product by zinc smelters, generation of non-hazardous waste materials.

Jan 1, 1992

By Li Cheng

The SKS copper smelting process was jointly developed by Shuikoushan Mining Corp. and ENFI (Beijing Central Engineering and Research Institute for Non-ferrous Metallurgical Industries) in China. It is a new bath copper concentrate smelting process with oxygen enriched air. The pilot plant testwork was completed successfully in 1993. SKS has demonstrated to be an advanced bottom blown smelting process. This technology got the First Class Prize of Scientific and Technological Progress awarded by CNNC (China National Non-ferrous Metal Industry Corp.) in 1994. The SKS process has significant capital and operating cost advantages. Its environmental and industrial safety and hygiene performance represents a substantial improvement when compared to conventional technologies. The technology has generated great interest in the Chinese metallurgical industry. Feasibility studies and basic designs have been carried out to incorporate in retrofit and green field smelter projects in China and abroad. This paper describes the history of the pilot plant operating data (50 tonnes dry feed/day), and discusses the features of the SKS technology, its application and possible future trends.

Jan 1, 1999

By José D. T. Capocchi

Viscosity of liquid lead, tin, and Pb-Sn alloys has been measured by the rotational viscometer method in the temperature range from 50 K above their respective liquidus temperature to 823 K. The results are accurate to within ±1.0 %. The variation of viscosity with temperature followed the Arrhenius-type equation µ = µo.exp(Q/RT). The composition dependence of the isothermal viscosity and the activation energy for viscous flow have not shown anomalous changes at the eutectic composition of the Pb-Sn system.

Jan 1, 2000

By Viviane Tavares

The technology advance of mobile devices makes consumers of these equipment do more constant exchanges, with this the obsolete devices discarding becomes an environmental problem, due its landfill accumulation. In order to minimize the environmental impacts caused by these equipment there?s the recycling necessity of polymers, ceramic and metallic materials. The main goal of this recycling is to study the printed circuit board of device mobile processing through ore treatment in order to recoup copper. Initially printed circuit boards were processed in a knives mill, in order to liberate the ferrous material, after that it was done the magnetic separation of the reduced residue. With the not magnetic fraction it was done the grain sized analysis and sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide leaching analysis. With the chemical analysis results proceeding from the leaching aliquot it was possible to observe that the leaching method with sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide presented greater copper recovery.

Jan 1, 2009

By R. Ressel

Keywords: ferrovanadium, thermodynamics, phosphorus Recyclable material is rapidly gaining in importance as a source of raw materials in industrialized countries. This is also the case in the production of ferrovanadium, where, increasingly, materials such as discarded capacitors, spent catalysts, slag, dust and sludge are used. As the V-content in the raw material varies greatly, the demands on process technology are very high. The share of perturbing elements depends very much on the source of the raw materials, which, in turn, makes a corresponding optimization of the various refining steps necessary. The raw materials are mostly available as oxides, which means that carbon, silicon or aluminium are used as reducing agents. Thermodynamic calculations were used to show especially the behavior of vanadium and phosphorus at different process conditions.

Jan 1, 2005

By Pengfu Tan

Electric arc furnace (EAF) dust from the steel industries is listed by the United Sates EPA as a hazardous waste under the regulations of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act due to the presence of lead, cadmium and chromium. The disposal of the approximately 650,000 tons of EAF dust per year in the U.S. and Canada is an expensive and unresolved problem for the majority of steel companies. The Waelz process has been considered as the best process for treating EAF dust. A process model, combined thermodynamic modeling with heat transfer calculations, has been developed to simulate the chemical reactions, mass and heat transfer and heat balance in the kiln. The injection of air into the slag and the temperature profile along the kiln has been modeled. The effect of (CaO+MgO)/SiO2 on the solidus temperature of slag has been modeled also and discussed. Some optimizing results have been presented in this paper.

Jan 1, 2005

By Rainer Schmid-Fetzer

"Isothermal solidification can be used to form strong bonds at low temperature which remain solid at much higher temperatures. The exploitation of this principally known technique for new high temperature processing steps and applications in electronic assemblies is the aim of this study. Three basically different variants of this bonding process are given. A comprehensive metallurgical screening is performed and the feasibility of binary material systems is given on a quantitative scale. Very attractive systems are spotted that have never been studied before. Detailed examples for the realization of bonding with complex ternary and multilayer systems are given. A highly innovative example is the chip stack or wafer to wafer bonding of unmetallized Si or SiC at 250°C. The proposed bond remains stable above the melting point of Si and enables entirely new semiconductor manufacturing steps. An improved die bonding process was proposed and verified experimentally.1. IntroductionIsothermal solidification can be applied to form strong bonds at relatively low temperature which remain solid at higher temperatures. The general principle of this type of joining processes is illustrated in Fig. 1. An interlayer of a low melting component, Lo, is provided as a foil or a thin film coating between the high melting joint components, Hi. The assembly is heated under moderate pressure to the bonding temperature, T 8 , and a liquid filler forms, either because the melting point of Lo is exceeded or due to a eutectic reaction between Lo and Hi. This molten filler initiates a rapid interdiffusion or reaction diffusion between Lo and Hi and the subsequent approach to an equilibrium state results in isothermal solidification. The solid phases formed at T 8 in the joint region exhibit a remelt temperature above T8 •"

Jan 1, 1996

By Jae R. Lee

Keywords: Self-propagating high temperature synthesis, AlN, Powder synthesis The particle size and shape effects of starting raw powders on the synthesis of aluminum nitride by self-propagating high temperature technique under high nitrogen pressure were investigated with various AlN diluents and Al reactants. It was found that the structure of beds of the starting raw particles largely affected the pore channels for nitrogen gas infiltration as well as the passages for combustion propagation before and during the reaction, resulting in the morphology and purity changes of the synthesized products. The AlN product of purity over 98% with about 30 microns was obtained.

Jan 1, 2005

By Fujio Ishii

The deoxidation of liquid nickel and nickel binary alloys with silicon has been determined at temperatures between 1500°C and 1650°C using quartz crucibles in order to investigate the deoxidation of nickel based alloys. The equilibrium constant of the deoxidation reaction in liquid nickel and the effects of the different alloying elements such as chromium, molybdenum, tungsten, iron, cobalt and coppcr on the activity coefficient of oxygen in liquid nickel have been established.

Jan 1, 1993

By B. C. Jena

Activities of carbon, cobalt and nickel were evaluated in the ternary systems iron-carbon-cobalt and iron-carbon-nickel for the temperature range 1300-1600°C for cobalt and 1300-1700°C for nickel. The carbon activities were determined from the knowledge of activities (1) in the binary system iron-carbon, (2) in the dilute ternary systems and (3) from the knowledge of carbon saturation data. The activities were mathematically expressed with the Taylor series expansion of Wagner's interaction parameter formalism modified to suit concentrated solutions. The cobalt and nickel activities were determined from the knowledge of carbon activities by applying the Gibbs-Schuhmann integration and from cobalt and nickel activities in the binary systems iron-cobalt and iron-nickel. Partial molar enthalpies of mixing were determined based on the temperature behaviour of the activity coefficients.

Jan 1, 1992

By N. L. Piret

In copper smelting minimization of solid waste generation is receiving increased attention with more stringent environmental legislation and lower disposal space availability. Copper smelting slags generally being valorizable, solid waste generation is attributed to the presence in the feed of unvalorizable impurities which do not report to the slag and to the unavoidable formation of contaminated dilute acid solutions which need neutralization. As to unvalorizable impurities, solid waste minimization is achieved by rejecting them in the highest possible concentration. Dilute acid is mainly due to the formation of SO3 in the smelter gases and to the discard of decopperized bleed-off electrolyte. Its generation is substantially lowered by preventing SO3 formation, by converting the dilute acid to a valorizable product, e.g., by thermal decomposition for H2S04 recovery or by precipitation as chemical gypsum, and by suitable treatment of the bleed-off electrolyte for impurity removal. Industrial processes are evaluated and alternatives are discussed.

Jan 1, 1994

By Anish Kumar

Keywords: Ultrasonic velocity, Poisson?s ratio, Elastic constants A new correlation has been established between two independent elastic properties, ultrasonic shear wave velocity and Poisson?s ratio, in a wide variety of isotropic solid materials, such as pure metals, ceramics, polymers and intermetallics. It has been shown for the first time that Poisson?s ratio decreases with increase in elastic moduli, E & G and ultrasonic velocities. This new correlation between two independent elastic constants may lead to the reduction in independent elastic constants for isotropic solid materials from two to one, at least for a given alloy system with different microstructural conditions.

Jan 1, 2005

By Elisa Alonso

Recycling is generally a more sustainable alternative to landfilling. Its financial costs however, do not always justify its practice, especially in the short term. As a result, even for precious metals such as platinum, significant amounts can end up unrecovered. In considering risks of materials scarcity for firms that require platinum and platinum products, this paper examines how recycling provides additional benefits as a risk-mitigating strategy against scarcity. The experimental platform for this examination is a System Dynamics simulation model that strives to capture the dynamics of platinum market supply, demand and price. The detailed structures of supply and demand are key features of the model. Results show that since the secondary supply of platinum depends on a supply chain separate from primary extraction, recycling can diversify the risks of primary supply instabilities and reduce the impact of price fluctuations upon firms.

Jan 1, 2009

By Markus Reuter, Antoinette van Schaik

In this paper the link between process metallurgy, classical minerals processing, product centric recycling and urban/landfill mining is discussed. The depth that has to be achieved in urban mining and recycling must glean from the wealth of theoretical knowledge and insight that have been developed in the past in minerals and metallurgical processing. This background learns that recycling demands a product centric approach, which considers simultaneously the multi-material interactions in man-made complex ‘minerals’. Fast innovation in recycling and urban mining can be achieved by further evolving from this well developed basis, evolving the techniques and tools that have been developed over the years. This basis has already been used for many years to design, operate and control industrial plants for metal production. This has been the basis for Design for Recycling rules for End-of-Life products. Using, among others, the UNEP Metal Recycling report as a basis (authors are respectively Lead and Main authors of report), it is demonstrated that a common theoretical basis as developed in metallurgy and minerals processing can help much to level the playing field between primary processing, secondary processing, recycling, and urban/landfill mining and product design hence enhancing resource efficiency. Thus various scales of detail link product design with metallurgical process design and its fundamentals.

Jan 1, 2014

By Jiongtian Liu, Guihong Han, Shuzhen Yang, Yanfang Huang

Binder, as a necessary functional material of electrode in lithium ion battery, has a vital influence on the electrochemical performance. The humics, coupled with polyacrylamide (PAM) and sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC), were used as a water-soluble binder for LiFePO4 (LFP) cathode using in lithium ion battery. The techniques of cyclic voltammetry (CV) and galvanostatic charge-discharge were conducted to evaluate the performance of humics binder in LFP electrode. The reversible specific capacity of LFP (HA + PAM + CMC) electrode can reach to 142 mAh g−1 after 50th cycling (100 mAh g−1) on conditions of raw materials with 1 wt% PAM addition, humics and CMC with a mass ratio of 3:1 in binder, and the raw materials mixed in an interval order. Humics has the potential to be used as a novel, eco-friendly and high-efficient binder for lithium-ion battery.

Mar 1, 2018

By Alex Del Castillo

The mineral processing industry has followed the development of database control systems, and various systems have been installed in existing and new plants. The goal is to improve product quality, raise productivity and lower production costs. Improvements in different units for mineral .processing .have been applied. This has led to increasing information for the operators. To support the operators and for an easy overview of the process, a complete concept for an integrated process-control system is required. This paper describes the plant-wide [process control system for the Collahuasi copper project located in northern Chile. The total investment for the project was $1,700,000,000 and included a port area and two copper processing plants, an oxide plant with a cathode production of 50 tons per year and a sulfide plant with a concentrate production of 330 kilotons per year. The main characteristics of the plant-wide process control system include a 200- kilometer long redundant control network and a 24-kilometer long redundant serial network providing coverage for the entire plant. The plants are located around 4,700 meters above sea level, serial communication lids allow the integration of over 2,700 SCADA data units, and the system handles over 7,500 physical signals plus the SCADA data integration. The main equipment consists of 39 different sized controllers, 16 operator stations, 5 engineering stations, 2 information management systems and 4 X- terminals. The project management, control configuration, factory acceptance test, system integration test, training, commissioning and start-up were carried out in close cooperation with the customer. The result was completely satisfactory for the customer.

Jan 1, 1999

By Tibor Zoltai

Asbestos is a generic term for industrially useful fibers recovered from exploitable deposits of the asbestiform varieties of five silicate minerals: chrysotile, anthophyllite, actinolite-tremolite, cummingtonite-grunerite, and riebeckite. Asbestos and asbestiformm fibers of some other minerals are known to be carcinogenic. Minerals crystallized in the asbestiform habit are characterized by unique properties (morphology, strength and flexibility, physical and chemical durability, and defect-free surface structures). The key to the unusual properties, and health effects, of asbestifarm fibers appears to be in their unusual surface structure. In contrast, non-asbestiform crystals of the same minerals, including the five so-called asbestos minerals do not have these properties and are not carcinogenic (1, 2).

Jan 1, 1989

By Pengfu Tan

A program ?SlagVis? has been developed to simulate the liquidus temperature, phase compositions and viscosities of ZnO-CaO-SiO2-Al2O3-?FeO? slag, such as Imperial Smelting Furnace (ISF) slag and lead blast furnace slag, combined with F*A*C*T slag database and the mathematical model of slag viscosities based on a modified Urbain formalism. The modeling results have been validated by a number of measurements. The effects of slag compositions on viscosities of ISF slag and lead blast furnace slag have been simulated and discussed.

Jan 1, 2005

By P. J. Uggowitzer, H. Kaufmann

"New Rheocasting is a novel route of semi-solid casting, in which the globular semi-solid precursor material is produced by controlled cooling of only slightly superheated melts in conventional steel crucibles. The resulting semi-solid slugs are placed into the sleeve of a vertical Squeeze Casting Machine and then filled into steel dies. Solidification occurs under hydraulic pressures up to 100 MPa Due to the reduced cost of precursor material, reduced investment cost and easier recycling, the New Rheocasting process offers cost reductions of up to 25% over conventional semi-solid casting · routes. The New Rheocast products are pore free, pressure tight, weldable and heat treatable castings.In the present work the New Rheocasting Process is introduced and the influence of heat treatment on mechanical properties of the New Rheocast alloy A356 is discussed.The alloy A356 is cast under ideal New Rheocasting conditions into a step die on an UBE HVSC 350 Squeeze Casting machine. As-east, TS and T6 heat treatment conditions with variations in solutionizing and aging time/temperature parameters are applied and the samples are tested by tensile testing. Alternatively, the same heat treatment conditions are applied to conventional Squeeze Casting parts and compared with New Rheocasting.Questions of potential cost savings due to modified heat treatment conditions are also addressed in this paper."

Jan 1, 2000

By J. R. Donald

For processing copper, continuous converting has been successfully employed in a variety of locations, but for nickel, there has yet to be a successful commercial implementation of continuous converting technology. At Inco?s Copper Cliff smelter, there are specific requirements for the production of Bessemer matte relating to downstream processing that makes continuous converting for nickel mattes even more challenging. The nickel carbonyl refineries require very low iron levels in the matte, and the sulphur deficiency must be carefully controlled such that the appropriate quantity of PGM-rich metallics are produced from matte separation. The present paper outlines continuous converter technologies that have been implemented in copper, and evaluates their potential for nickel converting. The challenges of producing a Bessemer matte to the required specifications are discussed. The economic and environmental driving forces, and the challenges of justifying a novel technology in place of productive existing equipment, are discussed.

Jan 1, 2005