Objective
The aim of this research is to develop a new technology which can be directly applied to slags in liquid form, i.e. when they are produced, in order to reduce the free lime content to less than 4%, thus stabilising the material and making it immediately suitable for further use.
Slags from steel production from ore in integrated steelmaking plants and from scrap in electric steelmaking plants constitute by far the largest items of solid waste produced by the steel industry.
Whilst blast furnace slag is normally used outside the industry as a secondary raw material (for cement production, road construction, etc.), not all steelmaking slag (no more than 50% of the total) can be put to further use at the plant where it is produced or elsewhere.
This means that every year large quantities of steelmaking slag (more than one million tonnes in Italy), classified under the law as special waste, must be disposed of at suitable dumping sites. The cost of transport and dumping is very high.
This implies under-utilisation of these materials, added to which there is the ever-increasing problem of a lack of dumping space.
The problem of reusing steelmaking slags is currently a matter of considerable concern within the European Community, as is reflected by the number of research projects being financed by the ECSC.
Slags can be put to further use only if they are stabilised first.
Free lime, found in slags in levels up to 20%, reacts in time with the humidity in the air, to form Ca(OH)2. In doing so it doubles in volume, causing the total volume of the slag to increase by around 10%.
Stabilisation currently consists in storing the materials in the open for long periods (approximately nine months on average), requiring storage areas which are not always available.
The new technology consists in adding to the molten slag materials containing chemicals such as metallic oxides, silica and alumina, which have a neutralising effect on the lime.
These chemicals are often present in steel industry wastes classified as toxic and harmful, e.g. alumino-silicate refractory materials containing hexavalent chromium, dusts from electric arc furnace fume extraction, and wastes containing asbestos fibre.
According to the available literature, adding two tonnes of the latter material to every 30 tonnes of steelmaking slag reduces the content of free CaO in the final product, relatively quickly, to around 1%.
However, it is necessary to examine how all the aforementioned wastes can be used to achieve the stated objectives.
The originality of the research lies mainly in the fact that it involves direct action on still molten slags to obtain, at the production site and in the time normally needed for cooling outside, inert materials which can immediately be reused, with the simultaneous elimination of toxic and harmful wastes.
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Programme(s)
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Coordinator
74100 Taranto
Italy
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