Investigation on steelmaking dust recycling and iron oxide red preparing

To investigate the physical and chemical properties of the steelmaking dust, wet sieve separation, XRD, SEM, EDS, and traditional chemical analysis were carried out to obtain the particle size distribution, mineralogy, morphology, and the chemical composition of the dust. The dust with a total Fe content of 64.08wt% has coarse metallic iron, magnetite and hematite grains, while fine clay minerals with a size of <38 μm are mainly iosiderite, calcium silicate, and calcite, which are conglomerated to each other. By following the procedures of wet magnetic separation, acid leaching, and oxidization calcination, magnetic materials were recycled and further prepared as iron oxide red with a productivity of 0.54 ton per unit ton of the dust. Middle iron concentrate with an Fe content of 65.92wt% can be reused as feeding material in the ironmaking industry. Additionally, washed water from acid leaching with an Fe3+ ion content of less than 5 g·L−1 was recovered as feeding water in the wet magnetic separation procedure.