Preparation of Refractory Materials from Ferronickel Slag

Abstract

The amount of slag produced from a typical ferronickel smelting process is 4 to 6 times that of the metal product, and handling this slag is a huge challenge to the ferronickel industry. The feasibility of a technological route for preparing refractory materialsRefractory Material from a ferronickel slagFerronickel Slag was verified in this study. Based on the thermodynamics analysis, the effect of the sinteringSintering temperature on the properties of refractory materialRefractory Material from the slag was studied in the presence of magnesiaMagnesia . The results of thermodynamics calculation showed that the reaction of MgO with SiO2 generated forsteriteForsterite and enstatite, whereas the reaction between MgO and Fe2O3/Al2O3 produced corresponding magnesiaMagnesia spinels. The experimental results showed that a refractory materialRefractory Material with refractoriness of 1580 °C, bulk density of 2.88 g/cm3, compressive strength of 106.9 MPa, and apparent porosity of 5.8% was obtained under the conditions of magnesiaMagnesia addition of 15 wt%, sinteringSintering temperature of 1350 °C and sinteringSintering time of 3 h. With increasing sinteringSintering temperature, the bulk density and the compressive strength of refractory materialRefractory Material increased but the apparent porosity decreased, mainly attributed to the formation of the liquid phase which promoted the densification of the refractory materialRefractory Material .