Metal Recovery From Industrial Solid Waste - Contribution To Resource Sustainability

Abstract:

Increased demand of metals has driven the accelerated mining and metallurgical production in recent years. For many metals the world is seeing a critical problem in depleting primary resources of metals and minerals – “metals scarcity”. In parallel, the mining and metallurgical operations generate enormous amount of solid residues and waste such as tailings, slags, flue dust and leach residues. In these types of solid waste, the valuable metal contents are relatively low for the current concentration and extraction technologies. They are mostly dumped, land-filled or used in limited secondary applications. Here two issues are getting increased attention from the public and the industry: (1) environmental pollution, (2) treatment of wastes from metal industry. Recycling and recovery of the metals and materials from these large streams of waste become a natural solution. The current technology and processes for primary metals production are not readily applicable for direct metals extraction from these waste materials. In the present paper, the resources of the existing solid waste are reviewed, and current technologies and R&D trends are discussed. The recent developed technology and flowsheet from authors’ group are presented for the potential solutions to waste and resource problems: zinc recovery from various industrial wastes, vanadium recovery from fly ash, and silicon recovery from wafer sawing kerf. Technological and economical challenges are addressed. It is very important that the processing of secondary resources should have minimal or no environmental impact.

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