ALTERNATIVE BINDERS TO BENTONITE FOR IRON ORE PELLETIZING - PART II: EFFECTS ON METALLURGICAL AND CHEMICAL PROPERTIES

Abstract

This study was started to find alternative binders to bentonite and to recover the low preheated and fired pellet mechanical strengths of organic binders-bonded pellets. Bentonite is considered as a chemical impurity for pellet chemistry due to acid constituents (SiO2 and Al2O3). Especially addition of silica-alumina bearing binders is detrimental for iron ore concentrate with high acidic content. Organic binders are the most studied binders since they are free in silica. Although they yield pellets with good wet strength; they have found limited application in industry since they fail to give sufficient physical and mechanical strength to preheated and fired pellets. It is investigated that how insufficient preheated and fired pellet strengths can be improved when organic binders are used as binder. The addition of a slag bonding/strength increasing constituent (free in acidic contents) into pellet feed to provide pellet strength with the use of organic binders was proposed. Addition of boron compounds such as colemanite, tincal, borax pentahydrate, boric acid together with organic binders such as CMC, starch, dextrin and some organic based binders, into magnetite and hematite pellet mixture was tested. After determining the addition of boron compounds is beneficial to recover the low pellet physical and mechanical qualities in the first part of this study, in this second part, metallurgical and chemical properties (reducibility - swelling index - microstructure mineralogy - chemical content) of pellets produced with combined binders (an organic binder plus a boron compound) were presented. The metallurgical and chemical tests results showed that good quality product pellets can be produced with combined binders when compared with the bentonite-bonded pellets. Hence, the suggested combined binders can be used as binder in place of bentonite in iron ore pelletizing without compromising the pellet chemistry.