Refractory Metals Recovery from Industrial Wastes

Refractory metals like Mo and V are alloyed in the special steels like heat-resisting, tool, ship and pipe steels for the improvement of their physical and mechanical properties. Most of refractory metals are refined as by-products in the other metals production processes. Recently, it becomes difficult to open new mines up for the environmental pollution issues, and as the results, it pays attention to recover them from industrial wastes as Mo and V resources instead of new mines development, because these wastes contain higher MoS2 in spent lubricant, MoO3 in oil refining catalysis and V2O5 in an domestic heavy oil combustion ash than the natural minerals containing them. In the present work, it was tried that these refractory metals was recovered as Fe-alloys because more than 80% of refractory metals are used as steel alloying elements and the energy consumption for reduction and production to Fe-alloys are less than that of pure refractory metals production.