Developments of Waste Management Practices
Sustainable Developments
The FERALL ® Process
Preferably used method to recycle alloy steel waste / by-products
Actually we have an increasing environmental and economic pressure to reduce waste, being dumped to landfill.
(EU and national laws)
Many of the metallic waste materials in form of sludges and dust have a good value if conditioned and recycled. The patented the processes of CARBOFER ® and FERALL ® are optimal for the treatment of various metallic waste materials like oily mill scale, bag-house dust, used refractory bricks or ladle furnace slag. The list of waste materials can be extended to blast furnace and converter dust and sludges as well as the waste residues deriving from steel working like grinding, honing, drilling and polishing.
These various waste materials are treated together with metallurgical essential additives in a cold way to produce a "fine combined product" – "The Product" - which is free flowing and inject-able. The prepared "fine Product" is injected with the means of lances into an Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) or ladle furnace for recycling and steel/ alloy-steel production. Steel production based merely on the recycling of various Fe-alloy waste materials.
"The Product" is designed for metallurgical use preferably in an EAF. The EAF in question is a recycling unit. For optimal recycling and / or metallurgical results the EAF is equipped with 3 lances for the injection of "solid fine products". The granulation of "The Product" is of < 6 mm; more efficient is a granulation of less 4 mm. The moisture content levels about 4 %. The injection rate can be adjusted from 600 to 1.000 kg per minute or even more. Also after months of operation the feeding and injection piping have shown no abnormal abrasion.
"The product" is injected continuously under the slag layer of the hot heel of an EAF for melting and beneficiation. With this method dust-production as well as dioxins and furan also CO2 emissions can be lowered considerably. "The Product" is injected in an area where temperatures of more than 1.400 °C are available, which has the positive effective of destroying organic materials deriving from cutting fluids without the risk of producing dangerous off- gas.
It is known practice that some of the mentioned waste materials are "briquetted" or "pelletized" and charged into the EAF for recycling. The character of most of the different waste materials is in the form of sludges or dust and have fine to finest granulation. This "nature" (consistence of the waste) is already of great advantage for the process FERALL ®.
The mixture of fine grained material deriving from slag and / or refractory’s plus fine-grained carbon (waste) plus sludges and filter-dust is treated / mixed to a free flowing, silo-storable and inject-able product.
Using this scheme of recycling, saves money especially in comparison to briquetting, agglomeration and / or pelletising and supplies a high factor of environment effect with regard to the quota of recycling of waste, less air pollution and last but not least: saving natural resources. .
The composition of the preparation-/ treatment-line is our own design. The machines are available to normal market conditions and are not "tailor-made".