Recovery of Zinc and Iron from Steel Mill Dust—An Overview of Available Technologies

The global shortage of zinc mines makes the extraction of zinc from zinc-containing wastes a hot research topic. Most kinds of steel mill dust (SMD) cannot be directly returned to the ironmaking and steelmaking processes due to their zinc content. A large amount of SMD produced during steelmaking has become a major challenge for steel plants due to environmental pollution, health issues and land scarcity. Lots of processes for recovering metals from SMD have been developed to comprehensively utilize them and solve these environmental problems. Zinc in SMD can be recovered by these technologies, and the residue can be used as raw material for ironmaking. In this work, the sources and characteristics of SMD from different processes were analyzed firstly. Then, the mechanisms of physical, hydrometallurgical, pyrometallurgical and pyrometallurgy–hydrometallurgy combined processes for SMD disposal are presented, and these methods are compared in terms of energy consumption, process complexity and industrial application. Finally, suggestions and prospects for utilization of SMD are put forward.