Sustainable Aluminum and Iron Production

Aluminium recycling requires 95% less energy than primary production with no loss of quality. The Black Dross (BD) produced during secondary aluminium production contains high amounts of water-soluble compounds, therefore it is considered as a toxic waste. In the present work, salt removal from BD by thermal treatment has been investigated in laboratory scale. The optimum conditions for treatment were established, i.e., temperature, gas flow rate, holding time, rotation rate, and sample size. The overall degree of chloride removal was established to increase as a function of time and temperature. Even Pretreated Black Dross (PBD) was evaluated as a possible raw material for the production of a calcium aluminate-based ladle-fluxing agent to be used in the steel industry. The effects of different process parameters on the properties of the produced flux were experimentally investigated, i.e. CaO/Al2O3 ratio, temperature, holding time, and cooling media. The utilization of PBD as the alumina source during the production of a calcium aluminate fluxing agent shows promising results. The iron/steel industry is responsible for 9% of anthropogenic energy and process CO2 emissions. It is believed that the only way to a long-term reduction of the CO2 emissions from the iron/steel industry is commercialization of alternative processes such as Direct Reduction (DR) of iron oxide. Detailed knowledge of the kinetics of the reduction reactions is, however, a prerequisite for the design and optimization of the DR process. To obtain a better understanding of the reduction kinetics, a model was developed step-by-step, from a single pellet to a fixed bed with many pellets. The equations were solved using the commercial software COMSOL Multiphysics®. The final model considers the reaction rate and mass transfer inside the pellet, as well as the mass transfers and heat transfer in the fixed bed. All the models were verified against experimental results, and where found to describe the results in a satisfying way.QC 20161128