Optimization of the Stainless Steel Dust Briquette Reduction Process for Iron, Chromium, and Nickel Recovery

Abstract

The recovery of iron, chromium, and nickel from stainless steel dust (SSD) has attracted considerable attention for their utilization as secondary resources in the ever-growing field of steelmaking. This paper investigates the reduction process of SSD briquettes in iron-baths in detail in order to determine the optimum processing parameters. A novel method of analysis by studying the erosion behavior of a corundum crucible was adopted to accurately calculate the recovery rate of the metals, and the effect of the parameters on the triple metals recovery rate was determined by orthogonal testing. The results show that the most important factor for the SSD briquetting process is water, followed by sucrose, carbon, and pressure. The optimum parameters of the SSD briquetting process are 13 wt% sucrose, 13 wt% water, 11 wt% carbon, and 30 MPa pressure. The compressive intensity was found to be 27.6 MPa. When a basicity of 1.6, 17% carbon, 5 wt% ferrosilicon, and 6% CaF2 were used in the SSD briquette reduction process, the triple metal recovery rate was in the range of 94 –100 %, 90 –100 %, and almost 100 %, respectively.

Keywords

• stainless steel dust
• orthogonal method
• iron
• nickel
• chromium