LAUSR

The effect of microwave-supported leaching of electric arc furnace (EAF) slag by ammonium salts was investigated to improve calcium leaching ratio for CO2 mineral sequestration process. The results show that the calcium leaching ratio from EAF slag at the constant temperature in the microwave field increases about 10% than that under the water bath at the same leaching time. The greater the microwave power, the higher the impact of calcium leaching rate, which proves that microwave treatment can improve the leaching ratio of calcium. The rapid calcium leaching step (up to 5 min) is possibly due to the easy reaction of calcium silicate, while the slower calcium leaching step (after 5 min) is owing to the difficult reaction of calcium ferroaluminates for the hydrolysis of iron and aluminum. The leaching behaviors of magnesium and calcium ions affected by different leaching parameters are similar and the concentration of aluminum, iron and phosphorus can be neglected. Calcium ion is probably not precipitated in the real leaching solution from steel slag by ammonium chloride solution as its concentration is less than 0.32 mol/L. However, the concentration of magnesium ion starts to drop sharply when the pH value is higher than 10 and it has precipitated completely at pH value of 11.6.