Processing methods and processing apparatus
Methods and apparatus for processing a material, the material being the upper layer from a metal melting process, the material containing one or more salts, the material containing one or metals, are provided. The method includes feeding the material to a size reduction step; feeding the material from the size reduction step to a density based separation step; feeding the material from the density based separation step to a leaching step. The size reduction stage is optimised to provide exposure of material for a ferrous and non-ferrous metal separation. The ferrous separation is preferably provided by an eddy current separator. The non-ferrous separation is preferably provided by a cyclone.
1 . A method of processing a material from a metal melting process, the material comprising one or more salts and one or more metals, the method including:
feeding the material to a size reduction step;
feeding the material from the size reduction step to a density based separation step;
forming a cleaned salt stream at the density based separation step; and
feeding the cleaned salt stream from the density based separation step to a leaching step.
2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the size reduction step includes a jaw crushing step, a rolling step, or both.
3 . The method of claim 1 , comprising feeding a treatment chemical to the leaching step, the treatment chemical being distinct from the cleaned salt stream.
4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the size reduction step provides an output as a flat bed of material to expose a ferrous metal to separation.
5 . The method of claim 1 , comprising:
forming a leached salt stream, at the leaching step; and
feeding the leached salt stream from the leaching step to a spray dryer.
6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the size reduction step is followed by a ferrous metal separation step and then a non-ferrous metal separation step.
7 . The method of claim 6 , wherein a residence time of the leaching step is less than 10 minutes.
8 . The method of claim 6 , wherein aluminium extracted by the density based separation step is returned to a furnace.
9 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the density based separation step uses a cyclone or an air based cyclone.
10 . The method of claim 1 , comprising removing, at the density based separation step, one or more gas generating components from the material to form the cleaned salt stream.
11 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the density based separation step separates aluminium and/or aluminium containing components from salt containing components.
12 . The method of claim 1 , comprising
producing, at the leaching step, a dissolved salt stream and a suspended solid stream; and
feeding the dissolved salt stream and the suspended solid stream to a filter step.
13 . The method of claim 12 , wherein the filter step includes feeding the dissolved salt stream and the suspended solid stream to a vacuum belt filter.
14 . The method of claim 12 , feeding the dissolved salt stream from the filter step to a spray dryer.