When a company has to determine whether to recycle or not, the bottom line is economics. But by recycling, the industry may derive positive benefits from addressing both: social responsibility and sustainable development issues. Most recycle technologies are based upon our understanding of both mineral processing and extractive metallurgy. Innovative advances in both technologies have been and are being made to address the unique resource recovery problems associated with both recycle and waste minimization. In mineral processing, the utilization of methods to separate valuable minerals or metals from waste minerals is based on physical or surface chemistry properties. In extractive metallurgy, three main areas have been utilized: Hydrometallurgy, where the utilization of aqueous environments to “leach” metals from different sources is employed to separate dissolved metals from each other or dissolved impurities, and to recover metals from solution; Pyrometallurgy, in which the utilization of high temperatures is used to modify the chemistry of minerals (or other sources), to reduce minerals to metals, and to refine metals; and, Electrometallurgy, where the utilization of electricity to recover and/or to refine metals in aqueous or molten salt solutions is used. This presentation gives examples on different mineral processing and extractive metallurgy methods that have been used successfully in recycling.

Citation: E.E. Vidal and P.R. Taylor, "Recycling Technologies & Considerations (Introduction to Mineral Processing & Extractive Metallurgy in Recycling)," Colorado School of Mines. MaterialsTechnology@TMS 2008.