Superconducting magnetic separation of ground steel slag powder for recovery of resources

Abstract

Steel slag has been considered as an industrial waste. A huge amount of slag is produced as a byproduct and the steel slag usually has been dumped in a landfill site. However the steel slag contains valuable resources such as iron, copper, manganese, and magnesium. Superconducting magnetic separation has been applied on recovery of the valuable resources from the steel slag and this process also has intended to reduce the waste to be dumped. Cryo-cooled Nb-Ti superconducting magnet with 100 mm bore and 600 mm of height was used as the magnetic separator. The separating efficiency was evaluated in the function of magnetic field. A steel slag was ground and analyzed for the composition. Iron containing minerals were successfully concentrated from less iron containing portion. The separation efficiency was highly dependent on the particle size giving higher separating efficiency with finer particle. The magnetic field also effects on the separation ratio. Current study showed that an appropriate grinding of slag and magnetic separation lead to the recovery of metal resources from steel slag waste rather than dumping all of the volume.