Regenerating of copper slag waste into abrasive material

• Main Author: Wang, Yi Ning.
• Other Authors: Chui, Peng Cheong
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Environmental engineering::Waste management
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/14150
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Resource conservation and waste minimization has been paid more and more close attention recently. This is one of the reasons for recycling spent abrasives. On the other hand, land disposal regulations are becoming more stringent as a result of health, economic, and political concerns, thus, spent abrasive disposal needs to be controlled as much as possible. Previous studies have found many ways to recycle and reclaim spent abrasives, such as pavement, additives in ceramic products and construction materials, etc. However, the disposal burden to land has not been reduced much by implementing those recycling strategies, especially for a seaport (involving too many abrasive cleaning activities for ships) with very limited land, like Singapore. Copper slag is a type of abrasive blasting material most commonly used in Singapore for steel surface preparation at shipyards. Generally after one-time blasting, spent copper slag is disposed into landfill. The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility of regenerating spent copper slag into new abrasive materials. As regenerating is the most direct method to reclamation, once it is proven feasible and profitable, life cycle of copper slag in abrasive blast-cleaning could be prolonged and the waste production rate would be minimized. In this study, the regenerated copper slag and other collected copper slag samples were tested on physical and chemical properties, like particle size distribution, hardness, etc., to know the effect of blasting to property change of slag, as well as the properties of regenerated slag. Results revealed that regenerated slag possessed satisfactory properties to serve as abrasive material, which were comparable to the fresh copper slag. Hence, it is considered feasible to regenerate from copper slag waste through cleaning, melting, crushing and sieving to obtain the required size range. Nonetheless, pilot-scale tests on productivity and abrasive consumption rate may need to be conducted for further study.