Enhancing Technologies to Improve Metallurgical Processes

Advancements in basic sciences, materials, engineering and instrumentation have opened up exciting possibilities in extractive metallurgy. The metallurgical processes generally are energy and water guzzlers, with extreme operating conditions, producing large amounts of effluents and waste products. Over the last few years, there has been an effort to innovate and integrate some of these developments into existing metallurgical processes, thus making them more energy efficient, resource efficient, and environment friendly. With the above intent, certain enhancing technologies, such as - microwave treatment, ultrasonic processing, electrostatic separation, and biological treatment methods have been discussed in the paper. These technologies could be integrated with several unit operations such as mineral beneficiation, sintering, smelting of minerals, leaching, metal precipitation, hot metal mixing, effluent treatment etc. There are many more technologies like ore sorting, chloride metallurgy, bioleaching but are left out to keep this paper brief. The discussed technologies are futuristic and promising in nature. Some of them are in the initial stages of laboratory experimentation or pilot plants. In fact, many research laboratories round the globe are working on these technologies to develop energy efficient and resource efficient solutions to the conventional methods. This paper attempts to survey some of the above technologies to highlight their potential in the minerals and metals industry, their current status, and possible use in our context.