• Resources Recycling
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.14-23
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• 2009

In terms of resources recycling and resolving waste disposal problems, it is very important to recover precious metals like Au, Ag and Pd and valuable metals like Cu, Sn and Ni from the scraps of waste electrical and electronic equipment(WEEE) that consists of detective electrical and electronic parts discarded during manufacturing electrical and electronic equipments and waste electrical and electronic parts generated during disassembling them. In general, the scraps of WEEE are composed of various metals and alloys as well as refractory oxides and plastic components. Precious and valuable metals from the scraps of WEEE can be recovered by gas-phase-volatilization, hydrometallurgical, or pyrometallurgical processes. However, the gas-phase-volatilization and hydrometallurgical processes have been suggested but not yet commercialized. At the present time, most of the commercial plants for recovering precious and valuable metals from the scraps of WEEE adopt pyrometallurgical processes. Therefore, in this paper, the technical and environmental aspects on the important pyrometallurgical processes through literature survey are reviewed, and the scale-up result of a new pyrometallurgical process for recovering the precious and valuable metals contained in the scraps of WEEE using waste copper slag is presented.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.68-76
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• 2018

EAF (Electric arc furnace) dust is an important secondary resource such as zinc, lead, and iron. Recycling of EAF dust is benefit to solving disposal and environmental problems caused by the heavy metals entrained in the dust. In this study, pyrometallurgical treatment technology of EAF dust reviewed for the improvement of conventional process and development of new process. The existing technologies categorized into four groups: those by rotary kiln process, rotary hearth furnace (RHF) process, shaft type process, and reduction smelting process. The product of these processes are ZnO and Fe or slag as a waste. Their mechanisms for the production of ZnO from EAF dust were carbothermic reduction and oxidation of zinc gas with air.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.365-369
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• 2001

EAF's dust has been treated mainly by pyrometallurgical reduction process in rotary kiln furnace to recover valuable metal elements such as Zn and to avoid the disposal of hazardous materials to waste. Recently, hydrometallurgical eletrowinning of zinc from a zinc-amino chloride solution obtained by the leaching of EAF's dust was developed to recover high grade zinc metal from EAF’s dust. But there are some disadvantages in each process such as difficulty of operation condition control and sticking problem in kiln process and low extractability and recovery of zinc owing to insoluble zinc-ferrite in electrowinning process. We propose a new combined process of pyrometallurgical one and hydrometallurgical one to treat EAF's dust efficiently and economically. In this study, ammonium chloride solution leaching of crude zinc oxide recovered from reduction of EAF's dust was carried out to find out the efficiency of zinc extraction from it and the possibility for performance of eletrowinning in the proposed process. Effects of various leaching variables ruck as leaching temperature, concentration of leaching solution and leaching time were investigated. And the leaching results of the crude zinc oxide were compared with those of EAF's dust. The extraction percents of zinc in ammonium chloride solution leaching of the crude zinc oxide recovered from reduction of EAF's dust were above 80% after 60 minutes of leaching under the leaching condition of 4M NH$_4$CI concentration and above leaching temperature of 7$0^{\circ}C$. And the concentrations of zinc in the leached solution were obtained above 50g/$\ell$. The activation energy calculated for zinc extraction in NH$_4$CI leaching was 58.1 KJ/㏖ for EAF's dust and 15.8 KJ/㏖ for the crude zinc oxide recovered from reduction of EAF's dust.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.31-39
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• 2019

The pelletizing of printed circuit board (PCB) sludge was researched for copper recovery in pyrometallurgical process. This pelletizing was carried out by using self-manufactured compression-type apparatus after pre-treatments (drying, water scrubbing, size classification) were proceeded. The physical properties (compression strength and drop-breakage test) were tested with a change of sludge sizing and the number of compression. In the case of using the undersized sludge of #140, its properties were improved to 0.6 MPa and 9.3 times. Moreover, they increased to 0.82 MPa and 19.0 times by using the #140 ~ 325 sludge. These imply that the packing density increases due to the elimination of large-sized sludge (#140), and also the weight of required binder decreases by the removal of fine-sized sludge (#325).

• Resources Recycling
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.30-41
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• 2019

Global production of zinc is about 13 million tons and zinc is the fourth-most widely used primary metal in the world following iron, aluminum and copper. When zinc is recycled to produce secondary zinc, it can save about 75 % of the total energy that is needed to produce the primary zinc from ore, and in therms of $CO_2$ emissions reduced by about 40 %. However, since zinc is mainly used for galvanizing of steel, the recycling rate of zinc is about 25 %, which is lower than other metals. The raw materials for recycling of zinc include dusts generated in the production of steel and brass, sludge in the production process of non-ferrous metals, dross in the melting of zinc ingots or hot dip galvanizing, waste batteries, and metallic scrap. Among them, steelmaking dust and waste batteries are most actively recycled up to now. Most of the recycling process uses pyrometallurgical methods. Recently, however, much attention has been given to a combined process of pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical processes.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.3-8
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• 2012

In the points of the environmental conservation and the recirculating utilization of limited resources, it is very important to recover valuable metals like Au, Ag, Pd, Cu, Sn, Ni, Co, and Li used as industrial raw materials from urban ores. From now, many processes have been developed for recovering the valuable metals contained in urban ores and some of them have been operated commercially. In the paper, pyrometallurgical processes developed for reclaiming valuable metals from urban ores will be briefly introduced.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.80-85
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• 2014

Commercially operating EAF dust recycling processes were investigated by means of unit process analysis. Over 80 % of EAF recycling processes are Waelz kiln process adapted a rotary kiln as a main reactor. There are differences among these pyrometallurgical processes by plant location and timely important things such as environmental regulations. In this paper, the characteristics of each plants are analysed with the point of unit process.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.663-672
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• 2007

The mutual separation behavior of actinides and rare earths in a countercurrent multistage reductive extraction system was predicted by computer calculation. The distribution information for actinides and rare earths in the reductive extraction systems of LiCl-KCl/Cd and LiCl-KCl/Bi was collected from literature and then it was used for the calculation of a multistage extraction. The results of the concentration profiles throughout the extraction cascade, recovery yields of various metal solutes, and separation factors between the actinides and rare earths were calculated. The effects of the major process parameters, such as reducing agent content in the metal phase, number of stages, and salt/metal flow ratio, etc., on the extraction behavior were also examined.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.27-39
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• 2022

The global demand for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) has been continuously increasing since the 1990s along with the growth of the portable electronic device market. Of late, the rapid growth of the electric vehicle market has further accelerated the demand for LIBs. The demand for the LIBs is expected to surpass the supply of lithium from natural resources in the near future, posing a risk to the global lithium supply chain. Moreover, the continuous accumulation of end-of-life LIBs is expected to cause serious environmental problems. To solve these problems, recycling the spent LIBs must be viewed as a critical technological challenge that must be urgently addressed. In this study, recycling LIBs using pyrometallurgical processes and post-processes for efficient lithium recovery are briefly reviewed along with the major accomplishments in the field and current challenges.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.608-613
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• 2017

We proposed a pyrometallurgical process to achieve gold alloy with an Au content of more than 80wt% from low grade (<35wt%) gold alloys. We performed the heat treatment at a temperature of $1200^{\circ}C$ for 5 hrs using Au35wt%-Ag5wt%-Cu60wt% gold alloys mixed with 1/2 weighed PbO and CaO flux by varying the ratio of PbO/(PbO+CaO) from 0 to 1. We investigated the change in content of the samples with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and time of flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS). The EDS results showed that the Au content increased from 35.0wt% in the PbO-only sample to 86.7wt% (in the PbO/(PbO+CaO) 1:1 sample), while the other samples achieved more that 84wt%. In addition, the 2/3 flux ratio sample showed the lowest Ag loss into the flux. In the ToF-SIMS results, the PbO only and CaO only fluxes had Au+ peak intensities of 349 and 37, respectively. Although the CaO-only flux might be more favorable considering the loss of Au into the flux, we concluded that the amount of Au lost into the flux could be ignored. Our results imply that that the pyrometallurgical process using a mixed flux is an effective hydrometallurgical process.