CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT THE RECYCLING OF EAF FLUE DUSTS AS SOURCE FOR THE RECOVERY OF VALUABLE METALS BY HYDROMETALLURGICAL PROCESSES

The present work takes an EAF flue dust to research its possibilities as resource from which to recover valuable base metals, principally zi nc, by means of hydrometallurgical processes. At the same time this ap proach renders a recycle of the flue dust and thus decreases its envir onmental impact. The EAF flue dust is leached by different leaching re agents: acid, basic and complexing, and from the different pregnant so lutions several approaches were proposed to obtain the most valuable m etals contained in it. These approaches included the application of so lvent extraction and other hydrometallurgical techniques.