Comparison of Grinding Characteristics of Converter Steel Slag with and without Pretreatment and Grinding Aids

The converter steel slag cannot be widely used in building materials for its poor grindability. In this paper, the grinding characteristics of untreated and pretreated (i.e., magnetic separation) steel slag were compared. Additionally, the grinding property of pretreated steel slag was also studied after adding grinding aids. The results show that the residues (i.e., oversize substance) that passed a 0.9 mm square-hole screen can be considered as the hardly grinding phases (HGP) and its proportion is about 1.5%. After the initial 20 min grinding, the RO phase (RO phase is a continuous solid solution which is composed of some divalent metal oxides, such as FeO, MgO, MnO, CaO, etc.), calcium ferrite, and metallic iron phase made up most of the proportion of the HGP, while the metallic iron made up the most component after 70 min grinding. The D50 of untreated steel slag could only reach 32.89 μm after 50 min grinding, but that of pretreated steel slag could reach 18.16 μm after the same grinding time. The grinding efficiency of steel slag was obviously increased and the particle characteristics were improved after using grinding aids (GA), especially the particle proportions of 3–32 μm were obviously increased by 7.24%, 7.22%, and 10.63% after 40 min, 50 min, and 60 min grinding, respectively. This is mainly because of the reduction of agglomeration and this effect of GA was evidenced by SEM (scanning electron microscope) images