Adição de resíduo da indústria de granito em escória de aciaria BOF visando sua utilização na produção de cimento.

Abstract

Steel making requires production stages and generates waste, such as steel slag. In the State of Espirito Santo, Brazil, granite mining is one of the main economic activities, wich generates granite sawing waste. This study aims at reusing these two types waste in order to minimize possible environmental problems; point out the technical feasibility of their use; and recycle them by using in cement. Some of the main components of steel slag, such as calcium oxide, oxides, and metallic iron undergo chemical transformations in the presence of humidity, wich cause slag volume expansion. This phenomenon, combined with slag reactivity, has made its use difficult. This study is a contribution to the study on reusing steel slag (ss) and granite sawing waste (gsw) deriving from granite mining. These types of waste are available in large amounts in the yards of steelmaking plants and granite mining areas, respectively. In order to reuse waste, physical, chemical and mineralogical characterizations were carried out. Different mix proportions were made with ss and gsw so as to allow the evaluation of the properties obtained from these mix designs, aiming at their use in cement production. The tests sought steel slag basicity between 4 and 5, for values close to those of blast-furnace slag-ranging from 0.9 to 1.5, whose use in cement production has been standardized since 1991 (NBR 5735, ABNT 1991). Mix designes with basicity between 0,9 and 4 were studied, and a mix with basicity 1.2 was chosen to be used in cement production. Throughout the investigation, 3 types of cement needed to be made until all the technical and operational problems arising were solved. Their properties were measured and compared to those of blast-furnace cement. The analyses of the achieved results for the cement made with that mix are presented and they show the potential use of these types of waste as admixture elements to cement, despite material heterogeneity.