Recovery of iron particles from waste water treatment plant of an iron and steel factory

Waste mud from the waste water treatment plant of an iron and steel factory has been investigated due to the recovery possibility of the magnetic materials. Mud samples was firstly expired due to the its chemical content with an XRF spectrometric method. Due to the XRF spectrometric analyses the mud sample had 30.72% magnetic content. This result motivated the experimental study. Dried mud sample grinded and sieved to define the particulate size and it is determined that about 66.67% of has the grain size lower than 50 µm. To gain the magnetic content efficiently, Jones type magnetic separation has been done under 17,000 Gauss on four different mud samples. It is determined that 69.59% of the mud sample compost of magnetic materials and 51.83% of this rate is simply iron base due to the XRF spectrometric analyses. As a result, 36.06% of the mud is the iron, 33.53% magnetic content out of iron and 30.41% is nonmagnetic composition. Economic value of the wasted potential is about 969,292.8 $ annually. The payback period estimated approximately about 10 months, by the investment of a separation units these are costs about 750,000 $ and annual electricity consumption is 64,751.8 $.