Prospects of ash, slag and solid mineral industrial waste utilization

The availability in Russia and especially in the Siberian region of a great number of heat power plants working on hard coal and industrial enterprises producing a lot of mineral waste as a result of their operation raises the question of an urgent need to reduce pollution of the environment. This problem may only become more acute in future and environmental pollution will reach a level when expenditures on environmental protection will be economically efficient. It can be easily seen that the efficiency of measures taken to improve the situation in industry in terms of making production more environmentally friendly is relatively low. As a result amounts of solid mineral waste in industrial areas are steadily growing and this poses a vital difficult-to-solve problem of their recycling. At the same time it is known that solid mineral waste products contain mixtures of potentially useful mineral substances and their separation may serve as a source of practically valuable semi-processed products used in various fields of industry. Therefore it is essential to search for promising economically efficient ways of waste recycling into practically useful high-tech materials for radio, electronic, electrical, building, and other industries.