Dr. Stefan Steinlechner

Abstract:

A wide variety of metals of considerable relevance to the European high-tech industry, and therefore also for our society, are supplied by the nonferrous metal industry. As the technologies became rapidly more complex in the last decades, the number and kind of metals and alloys utilized were getting more specialized and unique. With this technological innovation, the demand for minor elements increases steadily. Since their primary production, in most cases, can only be achieved economically as a by-product, it is difficult to respond to peaks in demand for minor elements. This, in turn, underlines the great need for recycling to compensate for these gaps. 
In this context, together with the industry partners of the Christian Doppler Laboratory, methods for determining the distribution of metals in the phases and compounds that occur in industrial intermediates, by-products, and residues are developed and applied, and the possibilities of influencing the behavior in hydro- and pyrometallurgical processes are investigated. This subsequently enables the development of extraction methods for selected elements.
Since residual industrial materials can differ significantly in their behaviour, various innovative processes using chemical and physical properties for separation are used. These include, for example, chlorination of valuables or artificial mineral production by targeted crystallization during the cooling of slags. The paper gives an overview of the activities of the Christian Doppler Laboratory and will then focus on the area of artificial mineral growth to enrich chromium in special spinel phases.