Thermodynamic modeling of zinc recovery from ferrous metallurgy sludge

Ferrous metallurgy enterprises continuously fill dumps with steelmaking and blast furnace sludge with high zinc content. Sludge occupying significant territories of enterprises is not involved in production and harms the environment. Since zinc leads to the formation of deposits in the blast furnace, manufacturers cannot involve this sludge in sinter processing. In addition, working with sludge can lead to problems such as decrease in iron content in the sinter, decrease in productivity of sintering machines, and increase in fluctuations in the sinter chemical composition. At the same time, zinc-containing sludge can become a valuable secondary product. Zinc remains a scarce metal, which encourages the development of technologies for processing zinc-containing materials. Extraction of zinc from sludge is difficult because it is not in oxide, but in sulfate or sulfide forms. In this paper, the possibilities of zinc extraction from sludge using the FactSage software package are evaluated. The authors present results of thermodynamic calculations of the possibility of zinc extraction from four types of sludge from two Russian ferrous metallurgical plants – EVRAZ NTMK and MECHEL. The data of chemical and phase analyses of this sludge are considered, as well as simulated graphs of zinc extraction dependencies from them. The graphs were built on basis of the received data from FactSage package. Addition of the reducing agent to the sludge varied, as well as temperature of the process. In addition, the possibility of abandoning carbon as a reducing agent was evaluated. To save the reducing agent, an optimal mixture of the company’s sludge was selected, in which coke consumption can be minimized.

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