Recovery of Aluminum from the Aluminum Smelter Baghouse Dust

The extraction of metals from a primary or a secondary resource is achieved by pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy. Currently, most of metal production plants consist of both pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical processes. Dust generation during the processes is one of the disadvantages of pyrometallurgical plants. Therefore, dust collection systems are installed in metal production plants to capture the emission of air pollutants from their off-gases. Due to environmental problems associated with the dust and high cost of disposal, proper treatments are required to minimize these problems. Recycling some metals from the dust during waste treatment could be a good way to utilize metal resources. In this research, alkaline leaching on the aluminum smelter baghouse dust has been studied with different reagents, bath temperature and pulp densities. Based on the alkaline leaching tests, the recovery of aluminum is high with sodium hydroxide at high temperature and low pulp density. HSC chemistry analysis shows that the product of NaOH leaching on the aluminum smelter baghouse dust is the sodium aluminate.