Coupled Preparation of Ferronickel and Cementitious Material from Laterite Nickel Ores.

Ruimeng Shi,Xiaoming Li,Chong Zou,Yaru Cui,Guibao Qiu,Junxue Zhao

doi:10.3390/ma13214992

Abstract

Nickel slags can be produced through ferronickel preparation by the pyrometallurgical processing of laterite nickel ores; however, such techniques are underutilized at present, and serious environmental problems arise from the stockpiling of such nickel ores. In this study, a modification to the process of ferronickel preparation by the direct reduction of carbon bases in laterite nickel ores is proposed. The gangue from the ore is used as a raw material to prepare a cementitious material, with the main components of tricalcium silicate and tricalcium aluminate. By using FactSage software, thermodynamic calculations are performed to analyze the reduction of nickel and iron and the effect of reduction on the formation of tricalcium silicate and tricalcium aluminate. The feasibility of a coupled process to prepare ferronickel and cementitious materials by the direct reduction of laterite nickel ore and gangue calcination, respectively, is discussed under varying thermodynamic conditions. Different warming strategies are applied to experimentally verify the coupled reactions. The coupled preparation of ferronickel and cementitious materials with calcium silicate and calcium aluminate as the main phases in the same experimental process is realized.

Highlights

Nickel (Ni) is a transition element that exhibits a mixture of ferrous and nonferrous metal properties, and is used in many industries, for example for making stainless steel, superalloy, non-ferrous alloy, superalloy, coin, and batteries [1,2,3,4,5]
Due to the correlation between the two production processes, we proposed the idea of coupling the process of preparing direct reduced iron with the process of preparing cementitious materials
While preparing nickel iron from carbon base of laterite nickel ore by direct reduction, the gelling materials with silicate tricalcium silicate (C3 S) and aluminate tricalcium (C3 A) as main components were prepared from coal gangue

Summary

Introduction

Nickel (Ni) is a transition element that exhibits a mixture of ferrous and nonferrous metal properties, and is used in many industries, for example for making stainless steel, superalloy, non-ferrous alloy, superalloy, coin, and batteries [1,2,3,4,5]. The laterite nickel ore is placed in the rotary kiln for drying intervention reduction at a temperature of 650–800 ◦ C, and placed in the reducing furnace at 1550–1600 ◦ C for smelting and sorting to obtain coarse nickel iron. While preparing nickel iron from carbon base of laterite nickel ore by direct reduction, the gelling materials with silicate tricalcium silicate (C3 S) and aluminate tricalcium (C3 A) as main components were prepared from coal gangue. The coupling of these two reaction processes was investigated experimentally

Material Analysis and Burdening

Thermodynamic Analysis of Coupling Reaction

Experiments and Results

Conclusions