Pressure agglomeration properties of brass melting flue dust and recovery of zinc

Abstract

Agglomeration and reduction methods were applied on the brass flue dust to introduce a recovering process. After the pressure agglomeration process, cylindrical briquettes, which contained solid reductant, were reduced in a tube furnace to recover the zinc content of the flue dust. Several tests were performed to improve the mechanical and reducing properties of the briquettes. These properties include the determination of water content, briquetting force, briquetting time, binder ratio and types, compressive strength and the zinc recovery ratio. The effect of the binder type on the zinc recovery ratio was also investigated. Results showed that resin as a binder gave the highest compression strength of all the others. In addition, temperature was more effective than time to raise the compression strength during the curing stage of the cold bonding process. Also, the zinc recovery ratio had an inverse proportion with the binder ratio. The higher binder ratio resulted in a lower zinc recovery.