CMA Corporation said that its USD 20 million Meretec steel recycling plant in the Melbourne suburb of Ringwood allows the extraction of zinc from galvanized steel so both can be reused.
According to CMA, there had been no ecologically sound and environmentally safe methods of recycling scrapped galvanized steel and recovering the zinc prior to its development. It said that it will be further developing and implementing the technology on an international scale.
The plant has a projected annual throughput of 120,000 tonnes of scrap galvanized steel, and creates 118,000 tonnes of clean black steel and 2,000 tonnes of pure powdered zinc from this material.
The technology is a six step de zincing process where galvanized scrap is pulverized into fist sized pieces, before being placed in a reactor drum. Hot caustic strips any coating from the steel. The steel is then washed and a rust inhibitor added. The solution from the reactor drum is purified to remove dirt, then electroplated in cells to recover the zinc metal.
