Detoxification of hazardous dust with marine sediment

- Steel dust addition considerably promotes sintering of harbor sediment.
- Hazardous steel dust can be detoxified by sintering with harbor sediment.
- Toxic metals in steel dust are either stabilized or/and vaporized during firing.

Hazardous electric arc furnace dust containing dioxins/furans and heavy metals is blended with harbor sediment, fired at 950-1100 °C to prepare lightweight aggregates. Dust addition can lower the sintering temperature by about 100 °C, as compared to a typical industrial process. After firing at 950 °C and 1050 °C, more than 99.85% of dioxins/furans originally present in the dust have been removed and/or destructed in the mix containing a dust/sediment ratio of 50:100. The heavy metals leached from all fired mixes are far below Taiwan EPA legal limits. The particle density of the lightweight aggregates always decreases with increasing firing temperature. Greater addition of the dust results in a considerably lower particle density (mostly <2.0 g cm−3) fired at 1050 °C and 1100 °C. However, firing at temperatures lower than 1050 °C produces no successful bloating, leading to a denser particle density (>2.0 g cm−3) that is typical of bricks.