Red mud is an important solid tailing with strong alkalinity that is obtained during the extraction of alumina in the Bayer process. The global reserve of red mud is more than 4 billion tons, and its disposal as tailing has always been a serious environmental problem. This tailing is considered as a potential source, due to its high content of valuable metal compounds including iron. In this research work, the extraction of iron in red mud is investigated by the method of reduction roasting. The main influencing factors are also investigated. These methods include reduction in Muffle and tube furnace, and temperature, reduction agent, and additive type are as important factors. Reduction roasting of the samples in a tube furnace, with Argon gas and vacuum, a mixture of red mud, graphite, and sodium carbonate at 700–1000 °C results in the formation of Fe3O4. Magnetic measurements indicate that saturation magnetization increases from 0.239 to 38.205 emu/g due to the formation of Fe3O4. Applying the magnetic field intensity of about 1000 Gauss results in the iron recovery of 89.9%.

This paper analyzes how feasible it is to use electric arc furnace slag as coarse aggregate, and blast furnace dust as fine aggregate in the manufacture of hot asphalt concrete for roads. Three mixtures were designed using the Ramcodes methodology, the M1 mixture of control with conventional materials, the M2 mixture replacing 50% and the M3 mixture replacing 100% of the conventional aggregates, which were submitted to tests to evaluate the susceptibility to moisture damage and plastic deformation, as well as others to determine the resilient modulus and the fatigue laws for each type of mixture. The mixtures with EAF and BFD presented better mechanical characteristics than the mixture with natural aggregates, met the acceptance requirements and the results of the performance tests are within the required requirements.

In recent years, lots of research has been done on effective usage of natural gas; the first step in these processes is conversion of natural gas to Syngas. Natural gas reforming process by refomer furnace is commonly used for syngas and hydrogen production. In this paper, windows based software, RIPI-RefSim, is introduced. By using proper heat, mass, kinetic and thermodynamic models as well as effect of catalyst shape, the software has been developed for the reformer furnace simulation for syngas and hydrogen production. RIPI-RefSim could be used in three different modes (Rating, Simulation and Design) and provides user a detailed understanding of furnace performance, product characteristics, temperature, reaction rates and pressure drop profiles, heat loss, effect of catalyst shape, and etc.

Microwave energy has potential for the efficient heating of minerals. Minerals or materials, which couple to microwave energy are called dielectrics and many valuable minerals are found to be dielectric. The mineral ilmenite is one which shows good dielectric heating characteristics. In this paper, the effect of microwave heat energy on the partial reduction of oxidized ilmenite oxidized in a conventional Muffle furnace at 900oC for 3 hours is attempted. Carbon as an additive was used for reduction of ilmenite at different time intervals using microwave oven as well as microwave sintering furnace. The results indicate that at one minute, the metallic iron formed contained 0.39% and no observation in mineral phases was observed from microwave oven. At three minutes duration, a partial phase transformation of ilmenite was observed and the metallic iron contained is 1.65%. Interestingly, at six minutes duration a distinct metallic iron phase containing 32% metallic iron is seen in microwave oven. The result of preliminary investigations from microwave sintering furnace indicates that apart from metallic iron phase, the distinct Titania phase was also observed. Further studies are in progress.

Optical float zone furnaces are used in crystal growth experiments where contact temperature measuring devices are not used, in order to avoid contamination. However, they are factory calibrated in terms of the applied lamp power and when in use, melting points are carefully controlled by visual monitoring using video cameras. There is therefore, the need to devise a means to recalibrate the percentage lamp power settings as temperatures (o C) for any sample being processed. To achieve this, a float zone furnace using ellipsoidal flood light reflectors has been designed, constructed and thermally characterized. The design specification was tailored around two ellipsoidal, commercial flood lighting aluminum reflectors of semi major axis a = 31.0 cm, semi minor axis, b = c = 25.5 cm and eccentricity e = 0.587 and powered by 2000W, rectangular halogen filament. The temperature distributions at and around the secondary focus of the realized furnace was calibrated against lamp voltage and power using a K-type thermocouple connected to a TES 1315 temperature data logger. The temperature growth of heated samples with applied lamp power was found to be described by an inverse exponential expression with a goodness of fit value of 99.48% after least square regression and is statistically significant. Using the determined temperature-power relationship, it is thus possible to determine the temperature of heated samples without a thermometer. Secondly, optical float zone furnaces can be temperature calibrated against input power.