Compositional Aspects in Valorization of Iron Silicate Slags
摘要
Pyrometallurgical copper productionCopper production is associated with high slagSlag rates, typically ranging from 2.2 to 3.0 tons of slagSlag per ton produced copperCopper. Therefore, slag valorizationSlag valorization is necessary to maintain a resource-efficient operationOperation. An attractive application for these iron silicate slagsIron silicate slag is as supplementary cementitious materialsSupplementary cementitious material (SCMsSupplementary Cementitious Material (SCM)), which effectively lowers the CO2 emissionsEmissions per ton of cementitious material. Although utilizing iron silicate slagsIron silicate slag as SCMsSupplementary Cementitious Material (SCM) has been studied in previous work, the scientific literature has limited data on the isolated effect of composition on the inherent reactivity in cementitious systems. In particular, no reports on compositional aspects related to milling properties and their implication on the performancePerformance as SCMsSupplementary Cementitious Material (SCM) are available. Therefore, the present study aimed to isolate the effects of milling in a synthetic FeO-SiO2-CaO-Al2O3-MgO system. By systematically varying the composition related to FeO/SiO2 ratio, CaO content, and Al2O3 content, a series of slagsSlag were subjected to milling studies and subsequent reactivity testing. The data showed a consistent correlation between the depolymerization of the slagSlag and an increased demandDemand for milling to generate the same specific surface areaSurface area. Consequently, the study highlighted that the proposed slag valorizationSlag valorization route encompasses both the isolated contribution of active elementsElements to the cement reaction and the ease of generating surface areaSurface area during the milling process.