Improved Process for Recycling of Ferrous Scrap Containing Copper

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On 1985 over 20 million tons of obsolete ferrous scrap was generated in the United States while only 34 million tons were recycled. It is estimated that over 750 million tons of recoverable ferrous scrap is available in this country. A large portion of this can not be used for the production steel products due to the presence of the residuals, in particular copper. Mini mills that exclusively use scrap as feed presently command 20% share of the U.S. steel market. Availability of copper free scrap is a major impediment for the growth and expansion of this industry. There is no commercial process for the removal of copper from the scrap. Processes that require melting of the scrap were unsuccessful due to poor partition coefficient of copper in solution of molten steel. A new concept for treating solid scrap will be investigated under this Expedited Award for Novel Research Initiative. Preliminary laboratory experiments indicate that this process removes over 90% of the copper in a short time. The process involves treating heated solid scrap with a sulfide matte. The copper reacts with the matte to form copper sulfide which is transferred to the matte. The objectives of this research is to explore the important process variables to determine the feasibility of the process. The kinetics and thermodynamic limitations using low matte/scrap ratio will be investigated. The principal investigator is a well established researcher in iron and steel technologies. He has published many papers in this field and thus highly qualified to perform the research. An award of $30,000 is recommended.