Zinc recovery from iron and steel making wastes by conventional and microwave assisted leaching

Abstract

Significant quantities of sludge and dust are generated as a waste material or byproduct every day from iron and steel industries.Nowadays The occurrence and recovery of metallurgical wastes from steelmaking and iron making processes is a great problem, mainlydue to the big amount and environmental pollution of these wastes by heavy metals. The future technology of fine-grain metallurgicalwastes treatment is mainly the thing of ecological and financial limits. This work explains the removal of zinc from blast furnace sludgeby hydrometallurgical process. The aim of this work was to carry out a chemical, physical, structural, and morphologicalcharacterization of these waste materials and subsequently to find out the best suitable method for the hydrometallurgical treatment.The experimental work includes full plant experiments. Extraction conditions such as the effect of microwave power, leaching agent,acid concentration, S/L ratio and extraction time on the zinc removal efficiency were evaluated. The main goal is to set the bestconditions to transfer zinc into the solution while the iron should to remain in the solid phase.

Keywords

• blast furnace sludge
• extraction
• microwave assisted leaching
• zinc recovery