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Thermogravimetric study of the reduction of copper slag by biomass

Reduction characteristics and kinetics

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Abstract

The utilization of copper slag is an attractive option of iron resource. However, extra energy consumption is required and contributes to greenhouse gases. In this paper, biomass was introduced as a new kind of reductant for the reduction of copper slag to decrease the energy consumption. The reduction kinetics and reduction characteristics of three kinds of biomasses were studied by thermogravimetric analyzer (TG). The TG curves showed the reduction reaction of copper slag and biomass could be divided into three stages during heating process: drying and pyrolysis of biomass process (<959 K), pre-reduction process (959–1100 K) and reduction reaction process (>1100 K). Pine sawdust showed the best reducing property and the reduction ratios of pine sawdust, corncob and straw reached to 80.6, 76.1, and 60.0 %, respectively, when the mass ratio of biomass/slag was 2:1. As the additive, CaO had promotion effects on the reduction reaction. With the increase in CaO addition, the reduction ratio of copper slag increased firstly and reached a peak at CaO/slag was 0.3:1 and then it declined due to the changes of slag viscosity. By kinetics analysis, the reduction reaction confirmed well with shrinking core model (R1). The activation energy of reactions was affected by the addition of biomass and heating rate in experiments. With the increase in the addition of biomass, the activation energy of reduction reaction increased gradually; with the increase in heating rate, the activation energy of reduction reaction decreased.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supposed by The National Natural Science Foundation of China (51274066, 51304048), The National Science Foundation for Post-doctoral Scientists of China (No. 2015M571322), The National Key Technologies R&D Program of China (2013BAA03B03), The Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (N130402019) and The Open-ended Funds for Yunnan province (CNMRCUKF1408).

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  1. School of Materials and Metallurgy, Northeastern University, P.O. Box 345, No 11, Lane 3, Wenhua Road, Heping District, Shenyang, 110819, Liaoning, People’s Republic of China

    Zongliang Zuo, Qingbo Yu, Mengqi Wei, Huaqing Xie, Wenjun Duan, Kun Wang & Qin Qin

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  1. Zongliang Zuo
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  2. Qingbo Yu
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Correspondence to Qingbo Yu.

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Zuo, Z., Yu, Q., Wei, M. et al. Thermogravimetric study of the reduction of copper slag by biomass. J Therm Anal Calorim 126, 481–491 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-016-5570-z

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