Advances in Molten Slags, Fluxes, and Salts: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Molten Slags, Fluxes and Salts 2016 pp 97-104 | Cite as
Optimized Slag Design for Maximum Metal Recovery during the Pyrometallurgical Processing of Polymetallic Deep-Sea Nodules
Abstract
The steadily growing demand for critical metals and their price increase on the world market makes the mining of marine mineral resources in the not too distant future probable. Therefore, an enormous focus lays currently on the development of a viable process route to extract valuable metals from marine mineral resources such as polymetallic nodules. For a country with few natural resources like Germany, the industrial treatment of marine mineral resources could lead to a significantly decreased dependence on the global natural resource market. The focus during treatment of these nodules lies on the pyrometallurgical extraction of Ni, Cu and Co on one hand as well as the generation of a sellable ferromanganese and/or silicomanganese product on the other. All work is conducted in lab-scale SAF furnaces. The concept approach is zero-waste, which includes careful slag design, so that the produced slags adhere to environmental restrictions.
Keywords
Polymetallic Deep-Sea Nodules Slag Design Submerged Arc Furnace Direct Slag Reduction Thermo-chemical ModellingPreview
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