Recovery of Iron From High-Iron Red Mud by Reduction Roasting With Adding Sodium Salt Original Research Article

Red mud is the waste generated during aluminum production from bauxite, containing lots of iron and other valuable metals. In order to recover iron from red mud, the technology of adding sodium carbonate-reduction roasting-magnetic separation to treat high-iron red mud was developed. The effects of sodium carbonate dosage, reduction temperature and reduction time on the qualities of final product and the phase transformations in reduction process were discussed in detail. The results showed that the final product (mass percent), assaying Fe of 90.87% and Al2O3 of 0.95% and metallization degree of 94.28% was obtained at an overall iron recovery of 95.76% under the following conditions of adding 8% sodium carbonate, reduction roasting at 1050 °C for 80 min and finally magnetic separation of the reduced pellets by grinding up to 90% passing 0.074 mm at magnetic field intensity of 0.08 T. The XRD (X-ray diffraction) results indicated that the iron oxides were transformed into metallic iron. Most of aluminum mineral and silica mineral reacted with sodium carbonate during the reduction roasting and formed nonmagnetic materials.