Currently Brazilian stainless steel production is around 350,000 tons per year. The stainless steel industrial generates several tons per year of dusts and sludges with high content of chromium, nickel, and iron. These wastes represent a problem to the stainless steel plants due to their high amount of chromium, iron, and led that could be recovery in the ironmaking process. Beside wastes can cause a contamination to the environment where they are put. The solution to these problems can be in the recycling of the dusts and sludges generated during stainless steel process. The characterization of these wastes was the first step of this study. Four wastes (one dust and three sludges) were used in this work. Then the wastes were agglomerated in the briquette form to introduction in liquid steel in the melting experiments performed in the apparatus at three temperatures 1570, 1600 and 1635°C. A bench-scale piece of equipment was used to melt the steel and briquettes. Samples were withdrawn periodically of the bath to verify the chromium behavior with the time of the experiment. A high recovery of chromium was found and the time required to this was about 15 minutes at 1600°C.
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