Research Progress and Trends in Iron Metal Purification Processes
Yuhua Tan, Haitao Yang, Guocai Tian, Xiaohua Yu, Jiacheng Hu, Xin Wang, Jiaxin Cheng, Heqing Song
Abstract
Traditional industrial pure iron can no longer meet the requirements of many core industries, such as aerospace, electronic information, and military industries. Thus, high-purity iron has attracted considerable interest. Pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy, and electrometallurgy provide extensive research platforms for purifying and developing novel processes for producing high-purity iron. In this paper, we review latest research advances in high-purity iron purification methods and production processes and summarize the merits of each purification method. Moreover, we propose a production process that ensures the production of high-purity iron while reducing carbon emissions. In this process, iron ore is leached using a hydrometallurgical process, high-purity iron is obtained by electrolysis from clean energy sources, such as photovoltaics and wind power, and the purity of iron is increased to over 5N with a pyrometallurgy process.