NEW MATERIALS FROM INDUSTRIAL AND MINING WASTES - GLASS-CERAMICS AND GLASS-WOOL AND ROCK-WOOL FIBER

The need to find economically and environmentally more viable methods for the management of industrial wastes has opened the way to the rese arch and development of processes which were still in the laboratory o nly a few years ago. The examples given concern two very common and ac utely-felt problems: the inertization and recycling of hydrometallurgi cal red muds (RM) and of mine tailings. In the case of red mud, one po tential process involves the extraction of metals (mainly Zn, but also Cd, Sn, Pb, Fe), and another involves mixing the RM with granite chip pings and cullet to produce glass-ceramics materials via melting and c rystallization. The paper also discusses a new flowsheet in which mine tailings are utilized to produce either glass-wool or very strong gla ss-ceramic products, with good resistance to chemical attack. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.