Life cycle assessment of the comprehensive utilisation of vanadium titano-magnetite

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThis study describes the life cycle assessment (LCA) of the comprehensive utilisation of vanadium titanomagnetite (VTM) through the integrated steel production and valuable element (V and Ti) extraction route. The major sources of environmental impacts are described and pollution prevention methods are proposed. The LCA methodology is based on the ISO 14044 standard, which uses GaBi 6.0 software and the Ecoinvent database, and the life cycle inventory (LCI) data (input and output) are from Pan. Steel. Impact assessment results indicate that production of pig iron in blast furnace (BF) exerts the most extensive impacts on global warming potential for the time horizon of 100 years (GWP 100 ) and fossil fuel consumption. By contrast, iron ore mining dressing and sintering contribute the most to acidification potential (AP), eutrophication potential (EP) and photochemical ozone creation potential (PCOP) because of dust and pollutant gas emissions. When indicator contributions are considered, the observed impacts on AP (50.88%), GWP 100 (24.25%) and photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP) (19.51%) are higher than those on EP, human toxic potential (HTP) and abiotic depletion potential (ADP). Therefore, when processes with environmental impacts are taken into account, the iron mining and dressing, iron ore sintering and BF iron-making processes must be considered, when category indicators are taken into account, AP, GWP 100 and POCP must be considered.

Selective extraction of titanium from Ti-bearing slag via the enhanced depolarization effect of liquid copper cathode

“…Most of vanadium-titanium magnetite are used as resources of blast furnace ironmaking. Titanium bearing slag with the TiO 2 content of 22% will be produced and can be considered as a type of titanium ore [5][6][7] .…”

Ore Assimilation and Secondary Phases by Sintering of Rich and High-Gangue Iron Ores

“…As a result, sinters in Indian blast furnaces contain 3-5 wt % Al 2 O 3 [7]. Another ore type of increasing importance, which is typical for some ironmaking facilities in China, comprises magnetite ores containing vanadium, titanium, and chromium admixtures [8,9]. Lastly, the sinter quality is highly dependent on and determined by the properties of the phases, which the sinter consists of.…”

“…Primary melts with higher basicity penetrated into the quartz or martite surface by forming a thin transition layer. Depending on the useful basicity, two phase assemblages formed ( Figure 19a): (9) where the free FeO formed an additional secondary magnetite. Equation (8) involves phases with idealized stoichiometry.…”

Upgrading of raw vanadium titanomagnetite concentrate

“…Vanadium titanomagnetite deposits are widely distributed around the world. Vanadium titanomagnetite usually contains valuable elements such as Fe, V, and Ti; rare and noble metals such as Co, Tc, Ga, Pt, and Pd can also be present (Chen et al, 2015;Zhu, Li, and Guan, 2016;Khomich and Boriskina,.2014;Luo et al, 2013). Therefore, considerable value can be realized through comprehensive utilization of the ore.…”