The Ruukki steel making company is part of the working team led by the Swerea MEFOS research centre and which, together with another steel mill LKAB, has devised a new technique to recycling vanadium from steel slag. The research work, known as ViLD, was developed in Lulea, in the north of Sweden, and has enabled the development of a simple but ingenious method of separating the vanadium from the slag produced in steel making.

Some 200,000 tonnes of slag from steel works are currently stored each year in Sweden. Vanadium present in the iron ore is transferred to the slag during the production process of steel. To date the possibilities of recycling slag have been limited, but research undertaken by Swerea MEFOS, together within this consortium, has given rise to a technology by means of which the slag can be recycled and the vanadium recovered for use in new products. The price of vanadium is currently about EUR 22 a kilogram and, amongst other applications, is used as an additive in steel and titanium alloys.

The method enables obtaining a product rich in vanadium that can be used in the steel industry for tools and catalytic converters, for example, while calcareous products from the slag remains can be employed as raw material in the cement and building industry.

Ruukki is part of the research consortium and has carried out studies to contribute to the process. The steel firm focused on the mineralogy of steel slag and the behavior of vanadium in these steel slags and has carried out experiments with the process of steel making in order to enrich the vanadium. It is a pilot project to date but, in 2012, researchers will adapt it for it to be marketable.

Each 5,000 tonnes of vanadium recycled with the new technique could replace the extraction of approximately 500,000 tonnes of iron ore containing this mineral, a process highly intensive in energy consumption. Moreover, the technique will enable eliminating the use of 100,000 tonnes of limestone and enable the reduction of slag waste by 200,000 tonnes annually.

(Sourced from www.basqueresearch.com)