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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Adam Jarvis
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
The iron and steel industry has a long tradition of bulk reuse of slags for a range of construction applications. Growing interest in recent years has seen slag resource recovery options extend to critical raw material recovery and atmospheric carbon capture. Full scale deployment of such technologies is currently limited in part by absent or partial inventories of slag deposit locations, data on composition, and volume estimates in many jurisdictions. This paper integrates a range of spatial information to compile a database of iron and steel slag deposits in mainland United Kingdom (UK) for the first time and evaluate the associated resource potential. Over 190 million tonnes of legacy iron and steel slag are present across current and former iron and steel working regions of the UK, with particular concentrations in the north west and north east of England, and central Scotland. While significant potential stockpiles of blast furnace and basic oxygen furnace slag could provide up to 0.9 million tonnes of vanadium and a cumulative carbon dioxide capture potential of 57–138 million tonnes, major management challenges for resource recovery are apparent. Over one third are located in close proximity to designated conservation areas which may limit resource recovery. Furthermore, land use analyses show that many of the sites have already been redeveloped for housing (nearly 30% urban cover). Deposits from recent decades in current or recently closed steel-working areas may have the greatest potential for resource recovery where such ambitions could be coupled with site restoration and regeneration efforts.
Author(s): Riley AL, MacDonald JM, Burke IT, Renforth P, Jarvis AP, Hudson-Edwards KA, McKie J, Mayes WM
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of Geochemical Exploration
Year: 2020
Volume: 219
Pages: 106630
Print publication date: 01/12/2020
Online publication date: 18/08/2020
Acceptance date: 08/08/2020
Date deposited: 20/10/2020
ISSN (print): 0375-6742
Publisher: Elsevier
URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gexplo.2020.106630
DOI: 10.1016/j.gexplo.2020.106630
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