Abstract
As part of its research efforts to encourage conservation and reuse of natural resources, the U.S. Bureau of Mines has developed a process to produce high-quality flake graphite from the steelmaking waste known as kish. The kish produced by current steelmaking practices is a mixture of graphite, desulfurization slag, and iron that is skimmed from the molten iron feed to the basic oxygen furnace. Kish was treated by a combination of screening and hydraulic classification to produce a concentrate containing more than 70% graphite. Acid leaching of the concentrate gave a graphite product with 95–99% purity and a flake size ranging from 10 mesh down. Industrial graphite users indicated that kish graphite is a suitable substitute for natural graphite material for most uses.
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References
H.A. Taylor, Jr., “Graphite (Natural),” U.S. Bureau of Mines Mineral Commodity Summaries 1995, p. 70.
P.D. Laverty, L.J. Nicks, and L.A. Walters, “Recovery of Flake Graphite From Steelmaking Kish,” U.S. Bureau of Mines Report of Investigations 9512 (1994).
P.D. Laverty, L.J. Nicks, and L.A. Walters, “Recovery of Flake Graphite From Steelmaking Kish,” in Ref. 2, p. 8.
P.D. Laverty, L.J. Nicks, and L.A. Walters, “Recovery of Flake Graphite From Steelmaking Kish,” in Ref. 2, pp. 10–23.
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Nicks, L.J., Nehl, F.H. & Chambers, M.F. Recovering flake graphite from steelmaking kish. JOM 47, 48–51 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03221205
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03221205