Recovery of valuable components from coal consumption waste

Abstract

Today, more than 56% of all coal in Russia is mined in Kuzbass. As a result of its burning, about half a million ash and slag waste (ASW) is generated per year. Ash dumps with such waste are constantly dusting; mobile ions of inorganic substances are washed away by precipitation, polluting the environment. Burned coals, being natural sorbents, contain impurities of many valuable elements, including rare-earth and precious metals, while their content in ash increases several times and can reach payable concentrations. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a technology for recovery of valuable components from ash and slag and using the remaining ash mass in construction and fertilizer industries. The efficiency of flotoextraction and chemical concentration methods for recovery of valuable components is assessed in the paper. The composition of the initial ash and slag samples and the resulting products of their processing were analyzed using infrared spectroscopic and optical emission methods.