Abstract

A large amount of waste copper slag containing about 35 ~ 45% iron has been generated and discarded every year from pyrometallurgical processes for producing copper from copper concentrate. Thus, recovery of iron from the waste copper slag is of great interest for comprehensive use of mineral resource and reduction of environment problems. In this study, a physico-chemical separation process for upgrading iron from the waste copper slag discharged as an industrial waste has been developed. The process first crushes the waste copper slag below 1 mm (first crushing step), followed by carbon reduction at for 90 min (carbon reduction step). And then, resulting material is again crushed to (second crushing step), followed by wet magnetic separation (wet magnetic separation step). Using the developed process, a magnetic product containing more than 66 wt.% iron was obtained from the magnetic separation under a magnetic field strength of 0.2 T for the waste copper slag treated by the reduction reaction. At the same conditions, the percentage recovery of iron was over 72%. The iron rich magnetic product obtained should be used as a iron resource for making pig iron.

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