Resurrection of the iron and phosphorus resource in steel-making slag

 This research focused on the treatment of steel-making slags to recycle and recover iron and phosphorus. The carbothermal reduction behavior of both synthesized and factory steel-making slag in microwave irradiation was investigated. The slags were mixed with graphite powder and heated to a temperature higher than 1873 K to precipitate a lump of Fe–C alloy with a diameter of 2–8 mm. The larger the carbon equivalent (Ceq, defined in the text), the higher the fractional reduction of iron and phosphorus. An increase in the SiO2 content of slag led to a considerable improvement in the reduction for both iron and phosphorus because of the improvement in the fluidity of the slags and an increase in the activity coefficient of P2O5 in the slags. The extraction behavior of phosphorus from Fe–P–Csatd alloy was also investigated at 1473 K by carbonate flux treatment. For all the experiments with a processing time longer than 10 min, the phosphorus in the fluxes could be concentrated to more than 9% (w/w) showing that it could be used as a phosphorus resource. Compared with K2CO3 flux treatment, that using Na2CO3 was more effective for the extraction of phosphorus, and this was attributed to the lower evaporation of Na2CO3. Finally, a recycling scheme for steel-making slag is proposed.