Studies of the Possibility of Improving the Quality of Iron Ores and Processing of Technogenic Composite Iron-Containing Waste of Metallurgical Production

Abstract

Ferrous metallurgy has been and remains one of the main types of production activities that enables humanity to extract, process and produce basic equipment for all types of activities. The growth of ore production as well as the reduction in world reserves of the raw material base have lead to the search for effective methods of processing and preparation of waste for metallurgical processing. The mining and metallurgical sector of the Republic of Kazakhstan, which has its an integrated mining and metallurgical complex with its own coal, iron ore, and energy base, uses iron ores from several deposits. It also includes ash and sludge storage tanks, which store valuable metallurgical waste, such as converter production sludge, rolling scale, and others, the use of which is hindered by the presence of certain harmful impurities in the composition (a rather high content of non-ferrous metals, especially zinc, a high content of oils, etc.). These valuable technological wastes require additional research that may contribute to their use as a charge or as iron-containing components of the charge. Based on the urgency of the tasks of dephosphorylation of iron ores and utilization of human-made waste (converter sludge and rolling scale), studies were conducted to try to eliminate existing problems. The results of the research work make it possible to obtain metals based on prepared pellets with a significantly low phosphorus content; this will enable the use of an oiled rolling scale and converter sludge for the production of a metalized product for steel smelting. The resulting metalized products make it possible to dispose of scale and converter sludge by 70%, and the degree of iron extraction exceeds existing methods by 1–3.5% (92.1–94% vs. 95.6%).