Zinc Dust Recycling Technique

Magnetic Separation of Fine Particles

Abstract

Zinc dust generated from recycling process of steelmaking dust must be pretreated by sintering prior to the reuse of zinc as a smelting raw material. The present paper proposes a novel magnetic separation process with ultrasonic dispersion, which recovers zinc oxide with the average size of 1 micron from the zine dust with a low energy consumption and recycling cost. The proposed prosess significantly improved the recovery and grade of zinc concentrate (contained 64% zinc at 80% recovery) over the conventional magnetic separation, without influencing the solid-liquid separation characteristics of concentrates. The improvement in the recovery and grade was resulted from the dispersion of fine particle aggregates in the magnetic separation cell by the ultrasonic wave.