Recycling of manganese secondary raw material via cold-bond pelletizing process

摘要

Large quantities of fines were produced during the shipping, transportation, handling and storage of manganese ore sinter imported from different countries to Sinai Company for ferromanganese production. These fines are generally considered as valuable secondary raw materials. Hence, they have a potential to be recycled back to the submerged arc furnace after having been agglomerated. For agglomerates to be considered as feed materials for submerged arc furnace they must have sufficient room temperature strength. Cold-bonded pelletization process offers an economically attractive and environmentally viable method for achieving this. Ordinary Portland, cement was used in this investigation for the purpose of producing a suitable cold-bonded pellet from such fines. In this investigation, the effect of adding different percentages of Portland cement on the mechanical properties of both green and pellet dried at room temperature for 1, 3, 7, 14, and 28 days of normal curing were studied. The results revealed that, although the compressive strength of green pellets improved with the increase of the amount of cement added, retardation in pellet drop strength was reported. Whereas, the increase in both the cement content and time of drying leads to increase in the mechanical properties of pellets normally cured at room temperature. Pellets obtained with the addition of 9 percent cement shows reasonable mechanical properties to be charged in the submerged arc furnace. Ferromanganese alloy having a standard, range composition was produced in a laboratory submerged arc furnace using such pellets.