Recycling Red Mud of JSC Ural Aluminum Plant with the Recovery of Iron and Construction Materials

Abstract

Red mud is a by-product of alumina industry which is currently almost completely stored in landfill sites without further use. It contains considerable amounts of valuable components such as iron, aluminum, titanium and rare-earth metals. The reduction smelting of red mud was carried out in laboratory scale to recover iron and obtain slag suitable for use in the construction industry. It has been shown that it is expedient to obtain pig iron and slag from the unprocessed red mud. Those two are suitable for the subsequent leaching of aluminum, titanium and rare-earth metals. It is practical to process dealkalized red mud, with composition adjustment by CaO and Al2O3 addition, in order to obtain pig iron and slag in the form of aluminous clinker.

Reductive Smelting of Neutralized Red Mud for Iron Recovery and Produced Pig Iron for Heat-Resistant Castings

“…This makes it possible to exclude the occurrence of superparamagnetism in this sample, a phenomenon that is characteristic of nano-scale iron-containing particles. Therefore, the asymmetry of the resonance lines The Mössbauer spectrum of this RM sample was analyzed in a previous work [35]. In this study, a more complete and correct description of the RM sample from Ural Aluminum Plant was obtained using the complex Mössbauer analysis.…”

“…Titanium is distributed between titanate (CaTiSiO5) and di-iron titanate (Fe2TiO5). The Mössbauer spectrum of this RM sample was analyzed in a previous work [35]. In this study, a more complete and correct description of the RM sample from Ural Aluminum Plant was obtained using the complex Mössbauer analysis.…”

“…The RM Mössbauer spectra obtained at 296 and 77.5 K ( Figure 4) have a similar nature and contain a sextet distorted by broadening into the interior of the spectrum, two additional resonance lines asymmetric in intensity in the interior of the spectrum, with a width comparable to sextet lines, and a relatively wide resonance line in the center of the spectrum. The Mössbauer spectrum of this RM sample was analyzed in a previous work [35]. In this study, a more complete and correct description of the RM sample from Ural Aluminum Plant was obtained using the complex Mössbauer analysis.…”

“…Liquidus projections for the CaO-Al2O3-SiO2-TiO2 system calculated in the temperature range of 1300 to 1800 °С are shown in Figure 5a. The slag chemical composition obtained after reductive smelting of the neutralized RM [35] was recalculated to four components (26.04 mass % Al2O3, 20.46 SiO2, 45.21 CaO, 8.29 TiO2) and is also shown in Figure 5а. It was assumed that all iron-containing phases are completely reduced and the Fe content in the slag is zero.…”

Application of ASTER images for identification and localization of iron minerals in red mud dumps of the Ural aluminum plant

“…The composition variations change, but not much. The main components of the chemical composition of RM are iron oxides and hydroxides, oxides of titanium, aluminum, and, less commonly, rare and rare earth elements [12,13,15,35].…”