Utilization of steel plants waste
Utilization of steel plants waste is a scholarly work, published in 2018 in ''Material Science & Engineering International Journal''. The main subjects of the publication include iron and steel industry, steel mill, metallurgy, waste management, environmental science, compressive strength, lime, materials science, Biohydrometallurgy, and Mill scale. Utilization of waste generated by steel plants has become a crucial issue due to evertightening environment regulations.Such rules implemented on steel makers have raised the circumstances to reduce the wastes generated by steel plants.Approximately 500 kg waste materials are generated per tonne of crude steel by the steel plant.Additionally, the depletion of high-grade iron ores imposes broad research work to utilize the waste materials.Nowadays, considering all waste materials as an economical asset; there is a focus on zero waste generation by 100% recycling of waste.How to utilize steel plants' waste in existing processing technology is highly challengeable for steel makers.One of the waste materials, mill scale is having rich content of iron; hence it should be transformed into valuable product i.e. steel.In the work, an attempt is made to produce nonagglomerated sinter cake of mill scale with different proportions of charcoal fines on the basis of stoichiometric calculations.Different amount of lime is also added to improve the strength of sinter cake.Degree of reduction and compressive strength of the sinter cake were measured.Characterization studies were also carried out by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive analytical X-ray (EDAX).A uniform texture of fine metallic particles confirmed that homogeneous reduction has occurred.Best result was achieved in sinter cake containing 10% excess charcoal of stoichiometry and 20% lime in which compressive strength obtained is 182 kg/sample and degree of reduction (α) is 47.8%.This sinter cake was charged along with Thermo-mechanically treated (TMT) steel scrap to check the feasibility of steel making in induction furnace.The experimental result shows that the waste product can be used successfully for production of steel.