Leaching of the residue from the dry off-gas de-dusting and desulfurization process of an iron ore sinter plant

The residue from a second-stage dry sinter plant off-gas cleaning process contains both the fine dust from the sinter plant and the sorbent used. Recycling of the material that is usually handled by landfills to the sinter plant feed is not possible because of its chloride content. Leaching of the chlorides allow the recycling of remaining solids. The saline leachate produced contains some heavy metals and must be treated before it is discharged into the sea. In laboratory experiments, leaching tests with the subsequent treatment of the leachate were conducted. After the process was optimized, all heavy-metal concentrations were below the permissible values. The optimum treatment conditions for heavy-metal precipitation were observed to be the filtration of the suspended solids followed by the dosing of liquid with lime milk (pH 10) and the subsequent precipitation using sodium sulfide.